Review: Yum Cha @ Crown Chinese Restaurant (皇冠酒樓)

Our favourite yum cha restaurant in Auckland at the moment is not a place you might accidentally wander into.  Even if you happened to be in the Otahuhu/Papatoetoe area, you would never have noticed the faded exterior of Crown Restaurant, the peeling paint, the narrow doorway leading to a set of uninviting stairs.

And if you had seen it, you would have dismissed it instantly.  It has all the wrong vibes: a dirty mat at the front door behind a sandwich board proclaiming "BUFFET ALL YOU CAN EAT!!  EVERY Sun. & Mon. evening...," no way of seeing who (if anyone) was eating inside, no mouth-watering menu on display which you could have used to entice your sceptical friends.  It's a place that looks like it has remained unchanged for many decades, from the days when Asians in New Zealand were a novelty and rice cost a fortune and had to be supplemented with white bread.

Your fears might grow as you force yourself up those old, rickety steps, take one last look out the grimy window at the top, and follow the corridor around the corner, past the kitchen and towards a roadblock: people waiting to pay on one side, children in front of crayfish tanks on the other, and waitresses trying to push trolleys in between them.  Once the chaos clears though, you will see a large hall in front of you, surprisingly full of customers, including some sitting on the stage area at the far end, next to a historic-looking Chinese wall painting.  It feels like an RSA crossed with an old school theatre, a place at once incongruous with a thriving restaurant and reassuringly without pretensions.

Old but perfectly acceptable dining room, popular with young and old.

What brings us out here is the food. That, and the fact that you can just turn up without booking.  There is a good variety of dishes to choose from, pushed around in metal trolleys, and it comes out quickly, so you don't need to sit around for hours waiting for something you like the look of.  Spare ribs, chicken feet, tripe and tero-tero (intestines) project an authentic image, although there are also friendlier options for the less adventurous.

The steamed dumplings are hot, fresh and tasty, and we particularly enjoyed the open prawn and coriander dumplings which looked beautiful with a few golden vermicelli strands placed on top.

Special prawn and coriander dumplings.

Crown Restaurant also has excellent congee, which they top with fried breadstick and spring onion slices when you order it.  [Added 8 December 2012: They now also offer deep-fried fish skins!] I've always shied away from eating foods at restaurants which are made from cheap ingredients, which I could easily cook myself at home.  Trouble is, I have never made a successful congee at home, even though it is in essence just rice boiled in water with a bit of oil and salt.  This place makes up for all my past failures with just the right flavour and texture in their rice porridge.  They offer multiple types of congee, including the classic lean pork and preserved egg version (皮蛋瘦肉粥), which is the one which came around in a trolley on our last visit.

Simple but delicious bowl of congee.

Another dish we were excited to find here are the baked BBQ pork buns, char siu bao (叉燒包/叉烧包) of the smooth, glazed variety, although the more common steamed buns with the cracked top are also available.  The fried items such as the taro dumplings are more of a gamble, as they are prone to being only lukewarm.

Baked BBQ pork buns and deep-fried taro dumplings.

Those with a sweet tooth will be pleased with the dessert selection, which includes egg tarts (both the Hong Kong and Portuguese styles), fried sesame balls filled with lotus seed paste (煎堆, jin deui), pancakes filled with red bean paste (豆沙鍋餅, dou sa wo beng), mango pudding (芒果布丁, mong gwo bou ding) optionally served with Carnation condensed milk, the flat crumpet-like steamed "white sugar cake" (白糖糕, bak tong gou), and more.  [Added 8 December 2012: The selection today included tofu jelly (豆花, dou fah) and durian icecream balls (榴槤糯米糍, lou lin no mai ci).]

Trolley with dessert options, including egg tarts, mango pudding and filled glutinous rice balls.

Crown Restaurant may not be the type of place you would take your in-laws to, but look past its exterior and it offers you cheap and varied options for filling up on your favourite dim sum dishes.

Panda Recommends

[Added 8 Dec 2012: Crown Restaurant currently has a D grade rating, but New Flavour used to have an E and it was always full.  I've never let a rating put me off good food.]
Go for steamed dumplings and congee.
Avoid the fried things on offer, as these can be cold and unappetising.

Vegie Pandas
As with yum cha in general, to avoid eating only desserts, you may need to order something off the menu to supplement the few vegetarian items on the trolley (delicious as they are, steamed ricesheet rolls served with sesame and sweet sauce hardly make for a balanced meal).

Restaurant Details

Crown Restaurant
1/F, 12 East Tamaki Road, Papatoetoe, Auckland
(09) 279 8398

Opening hours:
Yum char Mondays to Sundays 10am - 2:30pm

Never judge a book by its cover.

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