[content_slider]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[content_slide]
[/content_slide]
[/content_slider]
MELBOURNE | Nong Tang Noodle House is a Shanghainese restaurant in Melbourne’s MidCity Arcade, and aims to bring a slice of Shanghai’s Nongtangs (neighbourhoods organised around laneways) to Melbourne. We were invted to visit Nong Tang and were keen to learn more.
Shanghai born owner David Yang opened the hole in the wall restaurant with his mother in 2017. On the menu you’ll find a variety of dishes inspired by the food that Yang grew up with. Indeed, many of the recipes are his mother’s. The kitchen is run by chef Alex Ma (ex Wyndham Hotel, Shanghai) and the food coming out of the kitchen is rather delicious.
The menu features an assortment of delicious sounding noodles, dumplings, and more, along with a few options designed to appeal to Western tastes like sweet and sour pork and kung pao chicken. Ignore the latter and go for the authentic stuff.
Yang Chun noodles are the must order thing here. They’re fine, handmade noodles, made using three different kinds of flour. The simplest options features the noodles in a bowl with soy sauce and sesame oil, topped with deep-fried and fresh spring onion, and bok choy. A variety of topping are available including Yang’s favourite, and ours too, eight treasures. The eight treasures are diced pork, chicken, potato, carrot, bean curd and onion with soy sauce and chilli sauce, and they all go wonderfully with the noodles.
You can have your noodles in a soup (a light soy sauce chicken broth ) or dry, and you’re encouraged to order a few sides and mix it all up. We went for Yang’s choice again and opted for our noodles dry with a side of Shanghai traditional shredded pork with pickled cabbage and peas. The noodles are light, very long, and springy, while all of the other ingredients mixed in serve to give each bite a point of flavour and textural difference.
Beyond the noodles, we also highly recommend the signature pan-fried pork dumplings, kind of like a less soupy xi long bao, with a wonderfully crispy bottom crust. Also delicious are the slippery pork and prawn wontons, served in a mild, slightly sweet, chilli oil sauce. We were also big fans of the zingy hot and spicy soup with prawns, shredded pork, and tofu.
Nong Tang Noodle House
16/200 Bourke Street
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
Australia
Telephone: (03) 9639 9258
E-mail: n/a
Website
Open
Mon – Sun: 11:30am to 10:00pm