The appearance of the menu is rather impressive, presented in a hard cover book of glossy photos for the individual dishes. For us the photos were helpful in selecting a few of the dishes we were unfamiliar with. It took a little while to choose our dishes, narrowing down the variety of choices to a sizeable meal for two people. A Chinese feast with a group I think is the ultimate foodie adventure, you have the benefit of being able to sample a wider range of dishes. Tonight it was just the two of us.

We order a couple of dim sums, two main dishes and a side of steamed white rice.  Generally we’ll order the special fried rice but this time around we thought plain would complement the spicy main dish.

 

We start with a pot of hot Chinese tea while browsing the menu. The waitress pouring the hot tea into cups for us.

 

Szechwan Zen has recently obtained a trading liquor license and I can imagine what a feat that would have been for the owners to accomplish, there’s a lot of red tape when it comes to liquor licensing in Western Australia. A small bar is operational in the dining room of the restaurant, conveniently serving a range of wine and beer to accompany the meals.

We ordered a Chinese beer by the name of Tasingtao. The brand is one of the largest breweries in China, launched by a German company in 1903. It was crisply cold and not bitter.

 Tsingtao Beer

The crunchy pancake with sesame and dried pork floss arrived to the table first. The taste of lightly fried bread with a subtle sweet flavour in combination with toasted sesame seeds was delicious. Pork floss is cooked pork that is shredded a few times and stir fried as part of the drying process. There was a small amount of pork floss inside the crispy bread, enough to give the bread a nice salty flavour. The dish arrived warm and it was most enjoyable with a few sips of beer.

Crunchy pancake with sesame and dried pork floss inside 

Visual marketing is effective and advantageous, we ordered the crumbed prawn dish because of the photo in the menu.  The crumbed prawns were topped with a mayonnaise sauce and dried noodle crisps. A small bowl of fresh fruit accompanied the dish. We both really liked this dish, the soft prawn meat and crispy covering. 

Crumbed prawn

As the evening continued, the dining room started to fill up with the after work crowd.  Northbridge is in close vicinity to the Perth CBD offices making it a convenient option for dinner on the way home. Perth’s cultural venues are a ten minute walk away like the WA Museum, art gallery, State Theatre and a little further, The Perth Arena.

The steamed pork buns were juicy when biting into them, the pork tender inside and a slight balsamic flavour.

Steamed pork bun 6 pieces

The six delicate Szechwan Dim Sim were filled with sticky rice and ham. I have to admit they tasted delicious dipped in the soy sauce intended for the pork buns. I’ll dip anything into soy sauce, I go through quite a bit at home.

Szechwan style Dim Sim – 6 pieces