Most of the time when I head to Town Hall for lunch, it’s to eat at a sushi train. Chef’s Gallery used to be somewhere N and I would eat occasionally during my university days when it first opened, but we’d stopped in recent years. T, however, had been craving Chef’s Gallery for many months now. So with N and me in tow, we made it there for lunch last week.
They’d changed the menus: new dishes replaced our staples of mushroom and bean sprout stir fry noodles (for me) and pumpkin noodle soup with fried chicken (for N). But we weren’t discouraged – the new items on the menu were colourful and sounded interesting.
T and N love tofu, so we ordered the handmade egg and spinach tofu lightly fried, topped with preserved vegetables. I’m not a fan of tofu generally, but it was silky smooth. The standout though, was the fried egg and spinach skin. It was oh so crispy!
We also ordered a twist on the duck pancake. This is shredded Peking duck with cucumber, hoisin sauce rolled inside a fluffy Chinese roti. I could’ve sworn that roti was a Malaysian thing, but anyway, duck pancake in mini-kebab form is very tasty.
The dishes we ordered to share were a hit.
For myself, I had the squid ink handmade noodles with diced salmon sashimi pieces, prawns, Arctic surf clam and lotus roots served cold in a creamy sesame soya sauce, sprinkled with salmon roe and black and white sesame seeds. It looked very pretty in the picture on the menu with just the right amount of sauce. Unfortunately, what I got was a very generous amount of sauce, which isn’t too much of an issue itself, except for the fact that the sauce is ridiculously salty. So salty that I felt constantly dehydrated all afternoon and evenings afterwards despite drinking a lot of fluid.
If we ignore the salty sauce, the seafood and noodles would’ve made for a very pleasant dish by itself.
I also had the lychee and mint frappe. I’d enjoyed the same drink at Din Tai Fung a few months ago, and having found out that Chef’s Gallery has the same owners, I thought I’d try my chances at this drink here. Turns out they make it better at Din Tai Fung at Central Park (but not Westfield Sydney) – the mint overpowers the lychee here.
Chef’s Gallery is located at 273 George Street Shop G24, Sydney NSW 2000.