Zen Corner

“That’s just like back home,” says Fion Wan, who opened Zen Corner four years ago with her husband, Alex Liu. “Hong Kong is a very multicultural place and so is the food.”

The most ordered item on the menu is their signature wonton noodle soup – a flavoursome dish that features a fragrant and delicate chicken, pork and dried fish broth with a sea of perfectly cooked egg noodles and juicy wontons filled with succulent minced prawn, pork and fish roe.

The deeply developed broth is all made from scratch in-house each day from chicken, pork, dried fish and spices and is boiled for 10 hours to extract the perfect flavours. The wontons are hand-made by chefs each morning using fresh fillings and wheat flour dough.

To add to the flavour and texture of your noodles, the eatery serves traditional Chinese side dishes like their braised pig ear with hot chilli oil, chicken feet with vinegar and hot chilli, beef shin and tripe with Sichuan sauce and bean curd noodles with vinegar and garlic.

Once your bowl reaches the table, the flavour is up to you. Like your wonton soup spicy? Add some chilli oil. Dial up the saltiness and sourness with a splatter of soy sauce and vinegar and top it all by adding vegetable pickles. You can also choose from four different kinds of noodles including egg, wheat, clear and rice noodles.

Along with wonton noodle soup, the eatery serves other authentic Hong Kong dishes like their Hainanese with rice, hot and sour clear noodle soup and slow cooked beef brisket.

“We opened the restaurant as we wanted to create dishes exactly how we cook them back home,” Fion said.

“In Australia many Chinese restaurants are very different to the food we eat back in China and Hong Kong. We wanted to focus on well-made dishes that reminded people of the food they ate in their homeland.”

She said while the majority of their customers were from China and Hong Kong, there were some Westerners who dined at Zen Corner regularly.

“Some people travel to China or Hong Kong to work and live. They come back to Australia and they find the dishes they loved to eat while overseas, in our restaurant. They become very loyal customers.”

The husband-and-wife team are passionate about creating traditional dishes as well as experimenting with different ingredients and flavours.

Fion said they are always on the lookout for new recipes to tweak and make their own and head back to Hong Kong regularly to check out what the locals are doing.