‘Love at first bite’: The prawn dish worth driving to Noosa for
There’s one crunchy starter in particular at this small Cantonese-inspired restaurant that’s packed with flavour and worth a trip to Noosa alone.
QWeekend
Don't miss out on the headlines from QWeekend. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It was love at first bite of the prawn bread at Sabrosa Dim Sum House. Rather than regular prawn toast, here the chopped crustacean is wedged into house-made Chinese bread sticks to create a crunchy triumph topped with black and white sesame seeds and little piped blobs of mango flavoured mayonnaise topped with a sprinkle of fish roe ($20). It alone is worth the drive.
Set back from the street and a bit hard to spot, the Cantonese-inspired Sabrosa opened earlier this year in Noosa Junction, the low-key, diverse, business-orientated precinct that has quite a different vibe to tourist-heavy Hastings St. It takes its name from a Beastie Boys song and is from the team behind the seven-day success story that is Somedays Pizza, also in the Junction, and Mariella Mexicantina further south in Peregian Beach, their names also musically inspired.
House-made souffles, pate and sausages: why a new wine bar is drawing crowds
Review: Mt Coot-tha’s Summit restaurant reopens after five years
The decor is relaxed and stylish with large white tiles on the floor; a DJ booth in the corner, operational Friday and Saturday nights; bamboo steamer basket light shades; striking paintings by tattoo artist and painter Isobel Denby; and a large swoop of a bar adjacent to the small, open kitchen.
Head chef Kaung Htet Nyein’s clipped a la carte menu offers five fried and three steamed dim sum, starters of oysters and hiramasa kingfish, as well as a smashed cucumber salad or fried rice populated with char sui pork, Chinese sausage, prawns and egg. The only dessert is a banana and red bean spring roll with vanilla bean gelato.
Otherwise it’s the $69 banquet, which includes all the restaurant’s dim sum items, salad and fried rice, with a hoisin duck bun thrown in for good measure.
The wontons ($24 for four) join the prawn bread as a standout with their ultra-crisp wrappers encasing chunks of steaming lobster and prawn and teamed with a punchy chilli and garlic sauce. Also from the deep fryer, shiitake, wombok and carrot spring rolls ($12 for two) are crispy fat cigars that demand to be plunged into a pot of sweet chilli and garlic sauce. The plump steamed wagyu beef and lotus root potsticker dumplings ($22 for four) are also on song, the meat, still pinkish in parts, with cauliflower puree, and puddles of punchy black vinegar and chilli oil.
Steamed ground pork and prawn sui mai ($24 for four) are a more delicate proposition and quietly delicious with their wonton wrapper-encased juicy filling.
The cucumber in the bowl of smashed cucumber salad ($17) looked more sliced than smashed but hey, combined with black fungi, chilli, coriander and sesame, crushed peanuts and a hot, sweet and sour dressing with a chunk of fried wonton wrapper jauntily emerging from the top like a sail, it was a fine way to add some veg into the meal.
Drinks appear to be an important part of the picture, with a stack of cocktails including a recommended tangy Chase the Dragon (Seaborne gin, dry vermouth, raspberry, dragon fruit and lemon), supplemented by a variety of beers and a well-priced wine list with an Australian bent but multiple global choices, leaning towards the natural and biodynamic, such as the Latta Granite riesling from Central Victoria ($15 a glass/$72 a bottle) or a Gentle Folk Monomeith pinot noir ($86).
We’re in early on a Wednesday and the place steadily fills with families and couples and staff appear up to the challenge with water glasses filled regularly and plates delivered in steady succession and cleared promptly.
With a clear sense of where it’s going with its menu and drinks, combined with its easygoing, low-key ambience and comfortable furnishings, Sobrasa is appealing.
And there’s plenty of parking nearby, removing any possible objection to a visit to the often hectic Sunshine Coast tourist hot spot.
Sabrosa Dim Sum House
3/26 Sunshine Beach Rd, Noosa Heads
sabrosa.com.au
Open
Wed-Sun from 5pm, yum cha lunch
Sat midday-3pm
Must try
Prawn bread
Verdict
Food
Service
Ambience
Value
Overall
Our newborn baby seemed healthy … until she made this noise
A Queensland influencer has opened up the moment her joy following the birth of her first child quickly descended into three weeks of terror.
From the city straight to snorkelling on the reef: is this Queensland’s best day trip?
Leave your luxury accommodation in Brisbane and be snorkelling at Lady Elliot Islandon the Great Barrier Reef a couple of hours later in this ultimate package.