Aberfeldie’s family-run Benyue Kitchen is best-kept secret for authentic Chinese cuisine
A group of chefs behind a city favourite Chinese restaurant have opened this great value, family-run eatery in the suburbs.
Food
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Let’s call it the Melbourne effect.
Unlike our swanky Sydneysiders or beached-up Brisbanites, we stick to our suburbs.
Need a feed bayside? Fat chance you’re skipping across the Yarra for it.
Carlton is a Swan-St-bridge-too-far from South Yarra. And don’t get me started on those crazy cats crossing the city for a night out.
Lockdowns only intensified our patch pride and I reckon those in the 3040 were pretty stoked to welcome Benyue Kitchen to the neighbourhood last November.
The Cantonese restaurant is helmed by the Wu family, some of whom were on the pots and pans at St Kilda institution Lau’s Family Kitchen.
About 15 years after Flower Drum founder Gilbert Lau opened its doors, his sons Michael and Jason called time on the venue last March.
Chefs Yip Wu, Tang Au-Yeng, Xing You He and Qiang Wu have since carried Lau’s legacy northside to fill the Chinese restaurant void in family-friendly Aberfeldie.
There’s a real “stuck in time” feeling about the unassuming brown brick building. Sporting a straight outta the ’70s look, the former milk bar was most recently a Chinese then Malaysian restaurant, before the Wu family moved in.
I can imagine the schoolkids busting into that front room during those milk bar days, the doorbell jangling on their way in, leaning on that white laminate-topped counter to choose treats from the glass cabinet.
The 86-seater dining room is more classic, with white walls accented by exposed-brick arches, mahogany floors and broody dark timber tables. Your sense of time and space is warped — you really could be in any country town before the Y2K and be none the wiser.
Thankfully, the cooking doesn’t stray from tradition.
Housemade siu mai ($15.80 for four) kick things off, all plump prawn and pork meat snug in their rubbery yellow wonton raincoats. Well-seasoned and full-flavoured, it’s the familiarity you expect from your local Chinese joint.
A fluffy crab omelette ($18.80), is ethereally light with each bite texturally indecipherable of
what’s sweet crabmeat or egg. Staff ready you for the experience, placing a pepper grinder and pink salt flakes for discretional tableside seasoning. What a divinely, simple, dish.
Next up is the Peking duck ($14.80 for two, $40.80 for six), dry-aged for days in the kitchen hanging from kitchen rangehoods, and roasted until the skin’s perfectly crisp and flesh still tender, before it’s wrapped in a silky pancake with crisp cucumber and sticky hoisin. It doesn’t quite meet that Flower Drum level of eliteness, but it’s still pleasantly good.
Larger plates include land, veg and sea proteins, which may include Queensland prawns ($25.50 for two) fished exclusively from Hervey Bay, tossed with your choice of sauce (we choose the puckeringly sweet and sour Singaporean) teamed with just cooked sugar snap peas.
But the most impressive, and perhaps easily overlooked, dish at Benyue Kitchen is the char kway teow ($23.80) in which fat rice noodles are covered in a bounty of veg and meaty textures. Crisp yellow capsicums, firm bean shoots, scrambled egg, Chinese sausage lifted sweet spice, barbecued pork, chewy noodles, a sticky sauce — every mouthful is interesting and new.
The same goes for the ginormously portioned braised bean curd and mushrooms ($32.80), each vegetable glossy-coated, perfectly cooked and singing its own symphony.
A simple brown sauce made from chicken stock, oyster and sesame oil, loads each puffy tofu square with heaps of flavour. It’s a marvellous plate of food.
If you doggy bag what’s left of those mains (you’ll want to) there’ll be room to squeeze in sweets of three fried ice cream variations.
Bread crumbed, deep fried vanilla, served at room temperature, comes second fiddle to that golden-battered banana that’s been dunked in the fryer and served immediately with a heaping scoop of cooling ice cream and sticky caramel sauce.
A simple selection of Victorian wines, as well as international bottled beers, softies, juices and warming cups of either herbal or Chinese teas round out the drinks.
Benyue Kitchen’s brilliance lies in its simplicity — fresh ingredients, cooked moments before they hit your lips.
It sounds naff but you can taste the difference. Add that neighbourly service and we’re on to a winner. Sorry Aberfeldie, the secret’s out.
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