Chef's Gallery {Sydney, Australia}

This is the third post in my Eating Down Under series. Other posts in this series include Din Tai Fung, Sydney, and Three Fun Food Finds Unique to Australia.

This is also day 30 of the 31 Days 31 Posts Challenge.

We had just landed in Australia after close to 30 hours of sitting in airplanes and airports. Because Bryan and I had used miles to book this long trip, we flew this crazy route where we first flew to New York, then flew 14 hours to Hong Kong, stopped over for 3 hours, and then flew another 10 hours to Sydney.

By the time we arrived we were pretty jet-lagged, tired, and hungry!

We met up with Bryan's parents in Australia (they had flown from Los Angeles through Honolulu!), also using Bryan's umpteen million miles (retirement gift). We also met up with his sister, who flew direct from California.

What does a hungry Asian family do upon arriving in Sydney?

Get Chinese food, of course.

We were tickled to find a Chinese restaurant that makes hand-pulled noodles, handmade dumplings, and lots of other delectable looking dishes. Even though the US dollar was pretty weak at the time, the prices at Chefs Gallery seemed reasonable, with most dishes in the $15 - $20 range (trust me, this isn't bad for Sydney!).

There are huge windows that line an entire side of the restaurant. You can peer into the kitchen and watch the many chefs scurrying around, pulling noodles, making dumplings. etc.

This guy's making a huge pile of pork dumplings by hand.

After seeing the chefs pull noodles in the window, we knew we had to order some. We opted for the green spinach noodles, which seemed a bit more unusual. This simple dish of wok-fried seafood noodles ended up becoming one of my favorite dishes of the night.

We also ordered some normal hand-pulled noodles, such as this zhajiangmian dish.

Or this beef noodle soup.

We always get stir fried vegetables whenever we eat Chinese, so in this case we ordered Bryan's favorite greens - hollow heart vegetable!

The restaurant offers a ton of fun looking appetizer-like dishes. I'm so glad we had a large party (of 5), because it was hard to choose just a few things to order. Thankfully, with such a large party, we were able to try many things.

Pictured above is their Chinese Roti with Pork Floss. It really reminded me of the Malaysian version of the snack, except with the Chinese pork floss topping. This was delicious.

I also loved these homemade Spinach and Egg Fried Tofu, which were topped with preserved vegetables. This was fantastic as well. Why doesn't anyone make food like this in Boston?

We got an assortment of dim sum, such as Taro Cake, Calamari Wontons with Seawead, Crab Meat Spring Rolls, and Fried Bread.

Here you can see Shumai, Crystal Dumplings, Baos, and an interesting Vegetarian Crystal Dumpling.

We got one clay pot (or is it hot pot?) dish with mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and vegetables. It was OK, but it wasn't our favorite.

We didn't get any desserts, but they have the CUTEST desserts. Like little steamed buns with pig faces on them, or what they call a marshmallow "Totoro" (though I think it looks more like a bunny than a Totoro). You can see photos on the menu at their website.

We were most certainly satisfied after this filling dinner our first night in Sydney. I don't think we knew it at the time, but we soon came to the realization that Chefs Gallery offers excellent product at its price point. We loved the homemade noodles (the stir fried spinach one was our favorite), and I personally loved the spinach tofu.

Out of all the restaurants in Sydney, this is the only one that we visited twice. Granted, it was walking distance from our hotel so convenience had something to do with it. Nevertheless, we also went back because we really liked the food, the prices were reasonable, and it was fun to visit.

The second time, we skipped the dimsum and just ordered noodles and a few of our favorite appetizers.