I wanted Shanghai cuisine again this week so we decided to go to private home Chinese restaurant. I’ve been here before with mother deer just a couple months ago and enjoyed it. Normally I’d go try a new restaurant but Grayson had never been here before and we were getting hungry so I suggested we go here.
Mother deer is always on the look out for new places to try with her friends so like me, she’s quite observant when she’s traveling around town. On the way to the school mother deer already scoped out a restaurant she wanted to try so once we dropped off lil’ bun, we were off for a little mother daughter dining experience.
Shanghai dumplings
For our dim sum we chose to get the Shanghai dumplings ($3.99) because it was recommended on the menu as something that was popular. They were steamed dumplings wrapped in a wonton wrapper with a glutinous rice and beef filling. We were given the option of getting them prepared spicy but we decided to get them without the spice since we were planning to get a spicy noodle soup.
I wasn’t a big fan of them just because they had a strange spice in them that I wasn’t too fond of and the texture of the rice was a little too ‘al dente’ for me as well. Mother deer enjoyed them quite a bit though but thought they were on the dry side. When our noodle soup came she dipped the dumplings in the soup and it helped give them a little more moisture making them all the more delicious.
Pork and cabbage dumplings
Hands down this was our favorite dish of the night, the pork and cabbage dumplings (10 pieces for $5.95). They were juicy and perfectly cooked. There was a good amount of soup on the inside too even though they were not xiao long baos. I think next time we’re going to order two servings of this or try another type of dumpling here because they are so yums!
Spicy beef noodle soup
We chose to get the spicy beef noodle soup ($6.95) because I wanted something spicy and I’m always up for hot+spicy style soup. When the noodles came to our table the first thing mother deer said was “this place doesn’t joke around when they mean things will be spicy, those who can’t eat spicy food should definitely not come here” because we could both already smell the spiciness emitting from the dish.
As soon as we dug into the soup, we already found spoonful upon spoonfuls of chili flakes inside. Even though the soup was quite spicy, you were still able to sense the sourness from the soup. The soup resembled a Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and only the soup base was different. We both enjoyed the noodles quite a bit and would come back for another visit some time.
Clay pot salted fish with tofu, eggplant and chicken
For our protein dish we got the clay pot salted fish with tofu, eggplant and chicken. We liked the tofu the best out of everything because it was nice and soft on the inside but crispy on the outside. I’ve never tried this before so it was a new experience for me, I thought it was quite fragrant in flavor but I’m not quite sure as to what exactly the spices in it were since I’m not that familiar with this type of cuisine. I thought the chicken was moist but I found a hard time finding the salted fish pieces. With that being said, this dish did not go easy on the salt! Goodness it was salty! Okay we were warned in the name of it but still!
Stir-fried rice cake
Last but not least, we got stir fried rice cake with pork and cabbage. That and everything that was spicy had peanuts in it and I’m not a fan in those (I tried the spicy beef noodle soup before and it was delicious but I wanted to try something new). As much as I love rice cakes, I was not impressed with this dish. It was much too heavy on the oil. I could taste the oil it was cooked in and it was not a good experience.
We’ll probably be back to Private home chinese cuisine again when we want shanghai cuisine but we probably won’t be getting anything stir friend since we think it’ll be too oily for our taste. Maybe we’ll just get a truckload of dumplings next time because they are just that yummlicious!