Lady Lunchalot

Footscray is Melbourne’s undiscovered culinary goldmine. Between all those fantastic Asian supermarkets, the continental deli legacy from the early days of “Foot-a-scry”, African restaurants, the mecca of the Footscray markets, and the back-to-back Vietnamese pho shops, it’s impossible to take a step down Barkly Street without finding something delicious to eat.

But as far as I am concerned, the jewel in Footscray’s crown is a tiny noodle shop tucked in the shopping strip around Footscray Markets. Amazingly it’s not a Vietnamese noodle place, but a Chinese one. 1+1 Dumpling Noodles (yes, that is its real name) serves some of the heartiest Chinese dumplings I’ve ever had.

It’s the kind of place where you grab your own bowls and chopsticks after ordering and sit next to the drinks fridge… and the veggie fridge. Don’t expect airs and graces here. But do expect some tasty dumpling soups, fried noodles and the best lamb skewers I have ever eaten.

The cuisine at 1+1 Dumpling Noodles is straight from the Xingjian province in western China, so you won’t find any of those Chinese restaurant staples, like lemon chicken or sweet and sour pork here. The food is meaty, spicy and slightly stodgy in a stick-to-your-ribs kind of a way, and has an exotic tang that makes me think of Genghis Khan and Hun warlords. I can imagine them chowing down on the same charred hunks of fatty lamb around their campfires in the Mongolian steppes.

The long ropes of noodles are made in front of you in a huge coil (just peer over the mirrored barrier at the counter to see how they do it) and the dumplings are created by hand with a deft flick of the thumb. You should see them pump out those dumplings!

The dumpling wrapper is thick – not the usual paper-thin wonton wrapper I am used to with Chinese dumplings. These are dumplings with real substance. They kind of remind me of the first time I tried to make ravioli and ended up with 5mm thick pasta sheets.

But the real piece de resistance is a mammoth dish known as ….. BIG PLATE CHICKEN! It’s a huge plastic platter about 30-40cm diameter filled to the brim with curried vegetables and pieces of chicken (you can choose either half a chicken or the whole chook), topped with a slithering pile of noodles. It’s big enough to feed a family of five, but the first time O and I went there we made the mistake of ordering this on top of dumpling soup, AND skewers!

We had lunch there last weekend; soup with dumplings, fried noodles with lamb, a few skewers each and a soft drink, and the bill came to the grand total of $23. Prices have crept up in recent months, but they’re still laughably low (soups around $7.50, skewers are $1.50 each - order one more than you think you’ll eat and you won’t regret it. They’re that good). It’s not often that two people can roll out of a restaurant stuffed to the gills with excellent traditional food for less than the price of two movie tickets.

If only I’d thought of this when I was single.

Babe is a single New Yorker who has figured out a way to “live a champagne lifestyle on a Budweiser budget”. Her blog Take Me Out For Lunch documents her quest to find the perfect man and the perfect meal. She believes that she can tell a lot about a man on a culinary rendezvous, so her blog invites potential suitors to take her out to lunch in some of New York’s finest restaurants. So far she seems to be doing quite well. (At the dining that is - the dating doesn’t seem to be bearing much fruit.)

In Babe’s words, “if your man can’t whet your appetite then it is better to wave him goodbye and move on to the next dish until you find one that truly satisfies your tastebuds.”

I can vouch for that. On my first date with O he told me that he was a construction manager and mentioned that had always wanted to build a house around its kitchen. And that was before he even knew that I cooked! Naturally, he had me then and there.