A few months ago, my friend and I had lunch at No. 9 Palace in Dickson. Previously Chic Gourmet, the same owners have rebranded it into No. 9 Palace to provide a more upmarket offering to the Dickson community.
We start with some iced milk tea, mainly because it comes with these super cute teddy bear popsicles (unsure of price).
The steamed goldfish dumplings ($9) consists of fish and prawn mince shaped into Chinese goldfish with steamed red bean eyes served with creamy green bean and vegetable sauce. The dumpling skin is a little thicker than what I prefer, but otherwise the mince itself is nice. It’s also quite unique with the green bean sauce.
Xiao long bao is a must try for me so the truffle XLB ($13) is also ordered. Sadly the soup has leaked out through some holes in the dumplings, so it’s a little dry. The truffle scent is also extremely subtle – perhaps truffle oil is used in the broth.
ZhuGe’s Boat ($45) is full of theatrics. Served on a table-top version of a wooden boat, it’s filled with beef and kangaroo meat skewer sticks seasoned with cumin and five spice. Not only that, there’s dry ice at the bottom so it arrives at the table steaming. The meat is on the dry side, probably due to the challenges with cooking kangaroo properly. There’s an almost overpowering amount of spices and some chilli. It didn’t seem worth the $45 in my opinion.
The 18-hour slow cooked pork belly ($36) comes with three kinds of soy sauce, rock sugar and broccoli. I love the sauce and the pork belly really is super soft and succulent.
The Palace Duck ($36) consists of boneless roasted duck served with tobiko and the chef’s special sauce. Get out your camera – this is presented in a beautiful red jewellery box. It also comes with some plum sauce on the side.
For dessert, we shared one hot dish and one cold dish. I was really curious about the brown sugar ciba ($12), which are like deep fried mochi sticks with very hot brown sugar liquid inside. If you like mochi and brown sugar, you’ll like this.
The cold dish was the Mahjong milk pudding ($15) with mango sauce. The milk pudding is pressed into mahjong moulds and looks very elegant on the plate. It actually helps balance out the sweetness of the brown sugar ciba.
Overall, there were some good dishes and not so great dishes. Presentation is beautiful. It is expensive, so best to go with a group so that you can try more and share the cost. No. 9 Palace is kid friendly with highchairs and plastic cutlery available.
No. 9 Palace
13 Woolley St, Dickson, Canberra
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