The slotted spoon, with the braised fish in chilli oil, saves you from the fiery depths of this dish. Photo: Martin Conway.
If you’re looking for a spicy night out with some mouth-tingling Sichuan classics, a touch of Cantonese for the tamer eaters and an epic pile of dumplings, then Hand In Hand Dumpling in Emu Bank should be high on your list.
The name itself is a bit of a misnomer. While there are certainly dumplings on the menu with enough variety to eat to your heart’s content, this is far more than just a dumpling joint. Spend a night or two here, and you’ll likely find yourself elbow-deep in some cracking dishes, with a few rounds of Tsingtao to wash it all down. At least that’s how my last two Saturday nights went anyway.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: the secret menu. It’s so secret that it wasn’t until I wrapped up my second visit that I became aware of its existence, and this is the perfect example of why you should be a nosy parker when dining, as it was the adjacent table insisting on seeing the ‘Chinese menu’ that alerted me to it.
Peering over shoulders, as you should always do when dining, it was clear this version leaned heavily into offal: liver, pork stomach and boiled innards. I can see why the profiling system steered me elsewhere. And, in fairness, it wasn’t wrong.
What I did end up with, however, was exceptional.
The braised fish with spicy chilli oil arrived at the table in an impressive display of furiously boiling oil. This is a dish that always looks deadly, but really isn’t (unless you drop it in your lap and then good luck). Presented with a slotted spoon, most of the chilli oil slips away, leaving you with beautifully tender and sweet basa to pile onto rice.
The Yuxiang Pork is textural, sweet and substantial. Photo: Tenele Conway.
What struck me about this version of the dish was the use of two types of Sichuan peppercorns: red (the more common variety) and green (the less common variety). The addition of the green peppercorns gave it an incredibly floral and aromatic quality and left a lingering citrus flavour to the dish.
Next came the Yuxiang pork – thin slices of pork with strands of mushrooms and bamboo shoots. The intentional elongation of the ingredients was texturally pleasing, and the sweet and tart flavours, with a subtle background sizzle of Sichuan peppercorns, made for a moreish dish that was satisfied by the large portions they serve up here.
The beef with pickled chilli is a real winner. Photo: Martin Conway.
Two exceptional dishes in, it felt hard to top, but the beef with pickled chilli gave them both a run for their money.
A little sweet, fragrant with ginger, tender meat that wasn’t velvetised within an inch of its life, and with a wonderful umami backnote of pickled chillis – it’s a stunning dish. Deceptively, the pickled chillis aren’t the green chillis that are prominent in the presentation of this dish; they are actually combined into the dish, as evidenced by the small red smudges mixed through the meat.
The flavour may not be apparent at first if you aren’t familiar with it, but it forms the whole basis of the deeper notes in the dish.
We couldn’t leave without trying the dumplings, so a mixed plate was mandatory. Handmade, generously filled, but somewhat ironically given the name of the restaurant, they were outshone by everything else we’d eaten.
Now I’ve let the secret out of the bag, you can choose which way you go, and somehow I think you’ll be pretty happy either way.
Hand In Hand Dumpling is located at 12/114 Emu Bank, Belconnen, and is open for lunch and dinner six days a week from Thursday to Tuesday.
Original Article published by Tenele Conway on Region Canberra.
