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MELBOURNE | TuanTuan Chinese Brasserie is a Manila based cha chaan teng (Hong Kong-style restaurant) chain that’s recently opened its first Australian location in Carlton. The space on Queensbury Street, right next to another new opening, Torissong, is bright and airy, with high ceilings and floor to ceiling windows looking out on the street. Light timber, white and pastel coloured furniture combined with dark walls and lots of greenery to create a pleasant space.
The food at TuanTuan is all about Hong Kong style comfort dishes, and traces its way back to 1960s Hong Kong, where the family that founded TuanTuan hail from. Think things like snow buns, noodles, and congee. Each menu item has a corresponding letter and number combination, and you simply write your order down using the provided sheet and pencil.
TuanTuan is most famous for their snow buns, a take on Chinese xue shan bao. Baked fresh on the hour, the buns are soft and fluffy on the inside and topped with a flaky crust. They’re filled with your choice of barbecue pork, pineapple, salted egg custard, or almond cream, and are delicious. The pan fried white turnip cake in XO sauce is another great starter, with a wonderful soft, slightly chewy texture and intense XO flavour.
Macanese baked pork chop on rice with honey tomato bacon sauce, is wonderfully flavoured comfort food at its best, and the ‘make your own’ soup is always a good option. We opted for a seafood rice vermicelli fish broth noodle soup with pork meat balls.
For drinks it’s a selection of hot and cold teas, Horlicks, coffee and the like. Try the fragrant Nai Cha (Cantonese Milk Tea), that’s not overly sweet compared to many other versions we’ve tried in Melbourne.
The mixture of classic Chinese dishes with Western influences really captures the Hong Kong cha chaan teng spirit. It’s tasty, fast, and affordable, just the way comfort food should be.
TuanTuan Chinese Brasserie
1/139 Queensberry Street
Carlton
Victoria 3053
Australia
Telephone: (03) 9995 5407
E-mail: [email protected]
Website
Open
Mon: 3:00pm to 10:00pm
Tue – Sun: 12:00pm to 3:00pm; 5:00pm to 10:00pm