OK readers of The Lonely Plate, I've done a bit of traveling and a lot of eating so I've got a lot of posts saved up to share with you. To start off this little travel series, I'd like to tell you about one of our favorite places to chow down for cheap in Melbourne: Camy Shanghai Dumpling Restaurant. It's located on the edge of Chinatown on Tattersalls Lane (a bit of an alleyway) between Little Bourke and Lonsdale. This place pretty much rules because they're fast, really cheap, healthy and they have free self-serve tea! They're always busy and staff can be quite rude at times, but you'll never wait long and you can always count on leaving full and satisfied for a good price.
I'm a huge fan of their Chinese Broccoli. They put this awesome brown sauce over the greens that's a little bit sweet and makes them extra delicious.
Free tea also pictured above - don't forget it's self serve along with the plates, cups, cutlery, etc located in a little cubby area around to the right of the main entrance as you come in.
Being a dumpling restaurant, they have quite a few dumpling choices. I'm definitely a fan of the steamed dumplings over the fried, but this is just personal preference. If you like prawns and don't mind fairly strong spinach flavour, I recommend the spinach and prawn:
Or of course you can't go wrong (unless you're a vegetarian of course) with the classic pork:
If you can eat a lot of dumplings, you can get like 15 or 20 for $6 so don't be shy.
Their noodle dishes are pretty tasty also. This trip we stopped here for a quick, cheap feed with some free hot tea on a cold winter's day before catching our flight to the USA. Next time you're hungry in Melbourne and on a budget, check this place out for yourself and let me know what you think.
