Restaurant Review: New World Restaurant, Newmarket (Take 2)

Due to the arrival of another friend visiting from overseas, I had the joy of revisiting the Yum cha restaurant I previously blogged about (part 1 and part 2, namely New World Restaurant. This time round, I was smart enough to book a reservation a few days in advance and made sure we arrived a little bit early so we can score the seats before the crowds start to pile in.

As it was a really really hot day, I decided to start things off by ordering the cool Osmanthus jelly cake. The osmanthus combined with the tea-like taste of the jelly gave us the break we needed from the hot weather and gain back some of our appetite. I find that my appetite somehow dwindles on hot days while increasing on cold days… perhaps its the body’s way of compensating for additional energy spent on cold days and the reverse for hot days? Perhaps I’ll explore this issue in a future post… :) But for now, we move on to the next dish!

One of the specialty dishes that I’ve found only at New World is this dish of rice noodles stir fried with XO sauce, which is a seafood-based sauce that ranges from moderately spicy to extremely spicy; the homemade variant of XO sauces (starting point for your research here) are usually of the extremely spicy kind, and the heavy taste that comes with seafood, black beans, and spices makes it a great accompaniment to carb mains like rice and noodles. The rice noodles are pan fried slightly so they’re a little stiff to take away the floppiness, with the sauce stir fried into the actual noodles. It’s one of the dishes I order at this eatery on the particular days where I don’t feel like eating a diverse range of dishes. Just like the gelatinous chicken, this is a filling dish :)

One of the things I like about this eatery (and I’ll probably repeat this every time I re-review this restaurant) is that they prepare their meat dishes very well. The meat is seldom left to harden and too chewy for consumption, with the sauce prepared well to fully saturate the taste into the meat itself. In the case of this dish, the sauce was a little bit too salty from the spices and the black pepper, but since the portion was fairly small it wasn’t that big a deal. If in doubt (and wanting to save money), just order a bowl of rice or congee to go with a salty or heavy-taste dish - you’ll fill up in no time and the sauce just gives you more incentive to gobble up more rice!

At this point in time, my palate was feeling a little numb from all the beef dishes; they all taste pretty good but at the same time, the taste difference between each beef-based dish is minimal due to the way New World prepares and cooks their beef. My advice to would-be yum cha goers is to avoid ordering dishes that taste too familiar - you’ll just get sick of them! Instead of order all meat dishes, try a congee, soup, or vegetable dish. Dishes with a plainer taste are usually good because they help to reset your palate a little (drinking tea will definitely help too, but will also fill you up quicker), but most importantly bland-er tasting dishes provide a point a contrast from which you can better appreciate something that perhaps your palate was previously numb to due to a dish that heavily saturated the part of your palate. I’ll definitely write an essay on this topic in future, but for now… let me warn you in advance because there’s nothing sadder to me than to have something wonderfully prepared in front of me, yet I have no facility to properly appreciate it. It’s worse than throwing away good food! OK, I’ll stop the rant now :P

One of the staple dishes of yum cha, and one dish that I usually order without fail at this eatery. It’s oily but not extremely so, and the meat is tender according to the standard of New World - its a dish that I order to remind myself what yum cha should taste like! In the limited realm of the New Zealand yum cha scene, anyway…

As my friend is a lover of seafood, we grabbed the prawn dumplings when the trolley swung by our table. Best eaten hot off the steamer to savor the prawn juices that haven’t been absorbed by the pastry skin. The prawn used by New World is also of a decent size, which does make every bite fairly satisfying!

Over all another good experience at this eatery, and of course it’s a place that I keep at the back of my mind if I really don’t want to disappoint out-of-town visitors! Should any of you, the readers, decide to visit New Zealand and Auckland in particular, feel free to give me a shout for suggestions on where to eat and if I have time, I’ll cook up a culinary tour for you :) Until then, I’ll keep reporting from this little corner of the globe to keep enticing you with pictures of food, food, and more glorious and yummy food… ;)