A couple of weeks ago, I had the best dumplings and noodles I’ve ever tasted. Nong Tang Noodle House was such a lovely little surprise. Run by David Yang and his mother, Nong Tang is down an arcade off Bourke Street and you have to walk past iPhone shops and Ramen joints to get to Nong Tang where it’s all white tiled walls and nice tables and jazz playing.
Hi David, let’s start with how long Nong Tang has been open.
Just one year. We had a soft opening in October last year. I needed half a year for the soft opening because I needed to improve things and figure out what the customers wanted. After a half year, in February, we had the Grand Opening.
And now I’ve been seeing lots of Instagram posts from Nong Tang, which is good.
I run the business with my mother. My mum is 62 years old and she always just stays at home. I wanted her to go out so that’s why I opened this small place, so my mum can come here in the day time and then at night I am in charge.
Have you had a hospitality business before?
No never.
What were you doing?
I was a real estate agent in Victoria. I have the full licence and have my own business. But my father managed two five-star restaurants in Shanghai.
Did he give you lots of advice?
Yes because I just had some training before I started Uni in Australia when I was back in Shanghai for the holidays. I was in charge for the hospitality section of the electrical voltage, Total Solution, so I did lots of the project with hotels. So I became familiar with hospitality that way.
It’s quite different running a place, though isn’t it?
It’s very hard. There are so many things to look after, not only the customer. I’m in charge of food quality, my staff, and I need to manage everything. Sometimes the police officers come to check my liquor licence, and I have to clean the exhaust every half year. There is so much!
My mum cannot speak English. Well she can, but not well. So that’s why I have to be in charge.
I was reading that you hadn’t found anything in Melbourne that was like the noodles and dumplings you had when you were growing up in Shanghai.
I have been living in Melbourne for 15 years. I went to high school in Dunedin, in New Zealand. When I was 16 years old, my father said not to go to Australia because it’s all modern cities. My father wanted me to concentrate on study so he sent me to Dunedin. But it’s a very nice place. Then I went up to Auckland to study, so I spent five years in New Zealand. I’m a half Kiwi!
Then I came to Uni in Melbourne and there were only wonton restaurants, so Chinese restaurants, but not Shanghainese. A lot of the Shanghainese restaurants have a local flavour, a western flavour, not like a traditional Shanghai flavour. Shanghai dishes have a sweet flavour and they are stronger. I asked if my mum wanted to start a small business with traditional Shanghai noodles and traditional Shanghai dumplings in Melbourne. My mum said it was a good idea and we should try it.
All the recipes are from my mother and my great grandmother. When. was a kid, my great grandmother ways 90 years old. She was always cooking food; dumplings and noodles and duck. She cooked for me breakfast, lunch and dinner. I asked my mother if she was happy to bring her secret recipes to Melbourne. I didn’t want to do something similar to other Chinese restaurants. I wanted to have my signature noodles. All our noodles are house made in the kitchen.
They’re so good. I've never really been a big noodle fan. But I loved your noodles because they were silky but not sticky and they were so light and held the flavour of the side dishes and soup. You had to really work out which flour to use for your dough, didn’t you?
Before I opened this restaurant, I wanted to try different flour. Our noodles are flour noodles, not rice noodles. I tried mixing different brands and types of flour, 20 of them, to try my best to do the same flavour as the Shanghai yang chun noodles. The same for the dumplings. The Shanghai traditional pan-fried pork dumplings have the nickname, guo tie, and you can eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There is lots of soup juice inside and that’s our signature dumpling. Also we have the lemon chicken and honey chicken and our thick rice noodle with beef is still very popular. Not just only for the locals, the Asian people like it too.
Now lots of Western people come into the restaurant and order the dry noodles because it’s summer. They don’t want to eat the soup because it’s too hot. Also we have cold noodles, it’s still traditional Shanghai noodles because we serve it with peanut butter on top with bean shoots. For summer it’s very good.
It’s not just about going to a restaurant to eat something, I wanted to create the whole environment.
Is your chef from Shanghai too?
My chef is from Malaysia but he worked in Shanghai in a five star hotel for five years so that’s why he knows the flavour of Shanghai dishes. I give him the recipes and some tips so he can get the true Shanghai flavour. He cooks and I will try and I might say yes, the flavour is ok, if not, it goes in the rubbish bin and we start again.
I choose my suppliers carefully. I go to the Queen Victoria Market to buy the vegetables because the vegetables are very fresh there. They come from the Epping market. I have been to the Epping market as well for research. I want to keep my quality. I ask my supplier for beef, pork and chicken and duck Maryland. I tell them not to worry about the price but to give me the high-quality meat. Because, Jo, the cheaper chicken Maryland might be $3.50 a kilo and the good one might be $4.00, for example. Just 50 cents more. That doesn’t matter so that’s why I use the good quality meat. In New Zealand, pork mince smells very strong but y pork mince doesn’t smell. My supplier tells me that other people want to buy the cheap cuts, so why do I want to keep such high quality? I reply that I eat the dishes too. Every day I eat in my restaurant, so I want it to be good. And customers want good service and good quality food. If I like it, then everyone will like it.
You’ve created such a nice little space down here, with the jazz playing, but you were saying that’s become quite traditional in Shanghai.
Shanghai is near the harbour, so one hundred to two hundred years ago, all the new things landed in Shanghai first and then to the rest of China. Lots of jazz music, cake and bread came to Shanghai. A lot of Shanghai people call this ‘old-fashioned’. They like to dress formally and eat western food and listen to jazz.
I was born in Shanghai and I know lots of things about Shanghai and that’s why I wanted to bring that here. Do you know why I chose this place? Lots of people ask why I’m down the mall and not on the main street because I would get more people. But I wanted to be here because it is like the Nong Tang in Shanghai. The Nong Tang are like small lanes or hubs. All the decoration is like the Nong Tangs in Shanghai; vintage.
It’s not just about going to a restaurant to eat something, I wanted to create the whole environment.
Shop 16 & 17, Ground Level, 194-200 Bourke Street, Melbourne