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Being able to see your dining companions across the table is desirable, but if the barrier to conversation is a tower of bamboo steamers, then I’ll take the stack over the sightline. Dumpling by dumpling, basket by basket, I trust I will find my loved ones again. And if we’re at yum cha specialist Chef Wong, I know we’ll emerge from our dumpling adventures happy and sated.

My gang piled in one Saturday morning, nabbing the last of 12 tightly packed tables, and settling in to peruse the one-page order sheet, closely printed all the way from steamed pork dumplings to tofu lychee pudding with radish cake and XO fried rice along the way. Diners use a pen to indicate quantities: most things come by the piece and all dumplings are under $4.

As the morsels arrived (and kept arriving – I couldn’t contain the ballpoint), it was quickly evident this is no workaday operation. The dumpling wrappers are thin, their folding precise and the fillings pert.

Prawn and chive dumplings are made with an expertly stretched wheat and potato starch dough that becomes translucent when steamed, the filling chopped rather than minced like every prawn matters. The wrapper is just thick enough to create structural integrity, the 12 sealing pleats crafted as carefully as the finest embroidery. Try these without sauce: they need nothing.

Coriander and roast duck is a house invention, the rich meat sweetened with pork and brightened with prawn.

Rice rolls (cheung fun), filled with roast pork and dressed with sweet soy, are silky but thick enough to be properly chewy. The same excellent pork fills fluffy buns: grab some from the freezer for home.

Hong Kong egg tarts are an art, made with a complicated, laminated pastry. This one is exemplary, every layer evident and the custard filling smooth and creamy. What a gift.

There’s nowhere in Melbourne making dumplings with more integrity.

This business is powered by a belief in honouring legacy, in this case that of Wing Kwong “Chef” Wong, a dim sum master who died last year, aged 70, after more than 50 years filling and folding dumplings.

The restaurant – and its larger Hawthorn offshoot, where there’s a more extensive fusion menu – is run by Wong’s daughter, Doris, who set aside her midwifery career, and her husband, Chung Yew Wai, who swerved from finance to devote himself to the family restaurant, where hours don’t come longer nor margins thinner.

We should all be so grateful. Not only are they feeding their community thousands of beautiful dumplings each week, they’re keeping skills alive. Even in Hong Kong, the home of dim sum, there’s a lamentable decline in dumpling masters devoting themselves to the demanding art of yum cha.

Chef Wong started his career in Hong Kong aged 16 and worked for decades in Melbourne restaurants Shark Fin Inn, Shark Fin House and Gold Leaf. After cancer treatment in his early 60s, Wong was bored at home. Doris and Wai set him up with an activity: making dumplings to sell to friends.

During the pandemic, the home freezer count grew to eight, drawing so much electricity that whenever Wong switched on the kettle to make tea, the power blew. They shifted to these commercial premises in December 2022, intending to run a wholesale business but morphing into a restaurant when customers wanted to stick around.

Before Wong died, he passed on his skills and ethics: no shortcuts, no compromises. This is a modest restaurant, but there’s nowhere in Melbourne making dumplings with more integrity.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine