we're taking you behind the scenes of 3 must-see chinese restaurants in Northcote Town
Centre this hub in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is a hidden gem packed full of restaurants serving
mouth-watering food from all around the world today it's all about chinese food we share a
local favourite famous for its roast meats from succulent roast duck to tender barbecue pork
you have got to eat here we dive into a feast of unique north western chinese dishes
and get up close to see how the city's best pan-fried buns and soup dumplings are made
we're hunting down Auckland's best eats hit subscribe and get ready for some mouth-watering
food i'm Thomas and i'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry let's eat
this is Northcote Town Centre and it is packed with great food we're making 3 videos
across nine eateries showing you all the best places to eat here and my gosh there are a lot of good
places to eat let's get into today's video i'm super pumped to get into a huge range of
chinese food today our first stop is for siu mei cantonese roast meats this is my
soul food my comfort food we eat a lot of siu mei and we're heading to a little restaurant called
Fu U BBQ or it's a little shop at the top of food city which is a little food court
just around the back of the town centre square so in we go cantonese roast meats
Fu U BBQ have a real local following and it is all about these roast meats so
there's roast duck there's soy poached chicken look at that crispy roast pork the crackle is
golden, looks super crunchy and then the glistening bbq pork so they've got a huge menu
roast meats on rice roast meats with noodles and noodle soup with wontons there's a ton to
choose from let's get into the kitchen and see what they're getting up to
Fu U BBQ is owned by Mr Xi, Mrs Xi it's a tiny family-run business and they are famous for their roast meats
so it's a really compact little space you can see the chicken being um hung to dry there's ducks
hanging i can see roast pork and then this here is the oven in which um the meat is cooked roasted
up the skin crisped up this thing is where all the magic happens let's put in our order i am so hungry
we've ordered uh barbecue pork and roast pork on rice i'm just watching Mr Xi plate up our
meat so the two meats on rice with a bit of cabbage he's ladled some sauce over the top
we've also ordered their really popular roast duck noodles and also some greens
honestly the smells in here are exceptional
it's all action in this tiny kitchen so like this whole meal everything that we've ordered is
like last meal territory for me it just looks so sensational you can see the meat is glistening
perfect amount of lean meat fat oh wow and every customer who's come up to order has looked at me
as we've been filming and said this is the best place oh i can't wait to get in
Thomas and i eat a lot of cantonese roast meats my parents used to have a roast shop and so this is
my comfort food we've gone for a couple of Fu U BBQ's most popular dishes so we've got the
roast duck served with uh yellow wheat noodles the noodles are in a dark sauce and tossed with bean
sprouts and then we've gone for roast pork and barbecue pork on rice beautiful meat i can just
tell from looking at it that it is top shelf great meat fat crackle ratio on that roast pork and that
barbecue pork is glistening it's quite a sweet um meat it's marinated in a ton of different spices
and then honey all sorts of things and we've got a plate of choy sum which have been drizzled with
oyster sauce
look at this generous portion of duck so really meaty and that skin is just glistening
far out that is so good the meat was super succulent really crispy skin a layer of fat
underneath that skin that just melts in your mouth as you bite into it that is so good and then i've
got these noodles on the side yellow wheat noodles tossed in a sweet soy sauce some bean sprouts
perfect texture still have a bit of chew that sweet soy sauce just
coats the noodles this is bloody delicious i could not be happier to have this in front of me i mean
wow what a plate of meat and if you're a meat eater is there anything much better than
roasted pork belly and look at this this fat meat crackle ratio
wow
all those layers absolutely shine you've got the meat layer it's got a bit of chew it's
got a bit of texture to it then you've got the fat layer which just bursts and
liquidy in your mouth and then that skin on top massive crunch as you bite through that
absolutely delicious get some barbecue pork
oh my god that's heaven that glaze got a bit of sweetness to it nice saltiness
but you've got the flavour of the meat and i love that in this you can actually taste the meat
sometimes it gets lost you sort of can taste fat and sweetness this tastes perfect
i love this little shop it's raging got this tiny little shop front here
and then it's producing this quality of food out of that tiny kitchen this is absolutely epic
like everything in this food series so far it's just a hop skip and a jump to the next place
we're going to Xi'an Food Bar and they serve food from north western china so within this
shopping center or shopping area there's many different cuisines but there's also many different
styles of cuisine so china for instance has so much different regional food what we're going
to eat now is completely different from what we ate for lunch today cannot wait for this dinner
Xi'an Food Bar is a family-run chain they have about eight restaurants around Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
they specialise in northwestern chinese food we've eaten at a number of their restaurants and the
food is always top notch they do great noodles great dumplings which are being cooked over in
the woks there in hot water but we have opted for some different dishes some cold dishes some
cold noodles cold jelly can't wait to share this meal with you this lady here is just making our
liangpi our cold noodles so cold wheat noodles i can see some wheat gluten going in there and this
beautiful i think chilli sauce a load of sesame seeds in there smells amazing
i'm watching the lady make our liangfen which is a jelly dish made out of mung bean starch so over
here there's this really big slab of wobbly jelly i'm just going to give it a bit of a
move around look at this have a really thick slab of it
the jelly is going to be doused in a sauce with garlic chilli oil a bit of oil spring onions
it smells so aromatic
all right our fifth and final dish just came off the pass
and our table is absolutely loaded so we've got a range of delicious dishes
how colourful does our table look i thought that we'd ordered five dishes but then our
pigs ears showed up so we have got six epic looking dishes on this table and the
food here is so unique we've gone with mainly cold dishes it's a stinking hot day
and this is the type of food that i want to be eating in this weather so we've got these
mung bean starch jelly noodles a huge bowl of that just wallowing in this chili oil
we've got some fresh cucumbers so a cucumber salad these two go hand in hand so these are really
popular street foods in Xi'an this is a chinese hamburger it's cumin lamb stuffed into a bun
and then this here is the liangpi the cold noodles a ton of shredded cucumber on the top
some wheat gluten bean sprouts again that chilli oil sauce and then two cold salads pig ears
cucumber some shredded julienned carrot in there a ton of chilli and then this is dried bean curd with
celery and then again i can see garlic sesame seeds and chili oil so fresh and vibrant as
Sheena said how is this for a visual table of food it's so pretty to look at this pigs ears salad
vibrant good hit of spice the chilli has a real zing to it a tingle all around the front of the
tongue the pigs ears have that that sort of chew or bite that you get from a pigs ear where they
almost pop in your mouth and i've always liked that sensation when eating pigs ears
very nice this dish i adore so you got this wheat noodle which came from that big sheet so it wasn't
like any noodle i've ever seen prepared actually so a big round sheet which she just cut into shape
and just drenched in sauce and spice
got a lump of this gluten
yum that gluten is a great ingredient literally is gluten it's a clump of gluten that's pulled
out and condensed up and then that's what goes into the dish and it sops up all that chilli sauce
and the cucumbers on top we'll give it a good mix soon they add a freshness and a nice little crunch
to it yum the team brought over one of their most popular dishes and that is the Xi'an braised
pork with hand-pulled noodles and they pull the noodles to order we watched the lady pulling that
dough slapping it on that stainless steel table this is a delicious dish we've eaten it before
i've got to get into the chinese hamburger look at that it's just filled with cumin
laden lamb and Xi'an has a strong Islamic food culture hence the the lamb hmm
that filling is the absolute hero really punchy hit of cumin a little bit of chilli juicy onions
and really tender lamb oh this is such a great feast this liang fen looks like a bit of
me it is really slippery wobbly i'm just gonna douse it in that chilli oil
it's all about the texture it's really silky and smooth got the sting of the chili oil it's
not super spicy but it's just a fun dish to eat i love this place and what a spread
our chinese feasting is continuing now we're moving to some shanghai cuisine
and this is classic shanghai cuisine we're having xiao long bao or the soup dumplings
such a good dish we're gonna have some buns as well it's a neat little place just up here
just across the car park as always super compact everything's real close together
this shop is called Little Yum and we have arrived early to watch the team make their
famous xiao long bao and their shen jiang bao these guys are famous for these two shanghainese dishes
so the team here are just making the shen jiang bao and that's a pan-fried
bun this here is the pork filling so you can see that the filling here is quite um sticky there'll
be a lot of liquid mixed into that because inside is going to be this really juicy morsel
watching the bao getting made is pure artistry they are so quick so we've got um wheat flour
wrapper so this lady here is rolling out little balls of dough into the um size of the wrapper
and then this lady here is putting a hefty amount of filling into the middle of that
dough and then crimping it so that it forms a beautiful rosette sealing the
the bun and then into the oiled tray ready for steaming or frying
i'm watching the xiao long bao the soup dumpling wrappers getting rolled out she is so quick and
she's doing two at a time the wrapper is really thin and if you come over here you can see the
the filling so it's a traditional pork filling and if you get in really close you can see tiny cubes
of jelly which is made from a stock a meat stock in amongst that pork mince so what happens is that
when the dumpling is cooked when it's steamed that jelly melts and that turns into the soup
once the xiao long bao are made they go straight on top of the steamer
so they're in that basket for six minutes
i reckon we need to get out into the shop put in an order and get eating my tummy is grumbling xie xie team
xiao long bao is all about timing so when these guys come out of the steamer they are hot the soup inside the
dumpling is scalding so you want to leave them long enough that they cool down a little bit
but you don't want to leave them so long that the skin the dumpling wrapper gets really um gluggy so
i think they've been sitting there for long enough i put a little bit of vinegar in my spoon and i'm
going gonna let it wallow in there and what you do is to help it cool down a bit you bite a tiny hole
to the side of the rosette and let it become a steam vent i think these are looking really good
holy moly that is so good it's such a joyful experience eating a xiao long bao at the perfect
temperature the liquid in that soup dumpling just explodes in your mouth it's really rich because
it's a meat stock really flavoursome filling the tang of the vinegar the dumpling was perfect great
uh perfect thickness of skin that is delicious
there's always something special about being in
a kitchen at a place like this seeing the skill level of them making these dumpling wrappers
it's the sort of thing you watch and you know you could never achieve it you could not get the
speed the precision they do and then look at these results and these shanghai fried buns are stunning
they steam in the pan so you get this top side is all steamed the whole thing's steamed the
top side stays steamed and then they pour a whole lot of oil in there and that just crisps up
the bottom near the end and we've got three styles here we've got cheese and prawn we've got pork and
vegetable and we've got just pure pork i'm going with the pork and vegetable one
wow
oh crispy on the bottom soft on the top
juicy really nice i'm going to dip it in a bit of this chilli here wow
that packs a really good little punch man this food is great super flavoursome super juicy just
like you want it to be the xiao long bao i've had one and it's exactly what you want in a xiao long
bao full of flavour full of soup man these are tasty so this has been a big day of chinese food
and what a way to top it off we've covered so many regions of china in this video
get to Northcote eat this food check out the rest of the videos
we've done 3 videos all around this little village there is so much good food here come and
eat in Northcote we love it thanks for watching subscribe if you enjoyed the video see ya