571 Dominion Road, Balmoral, Auckland (09) 6388032
Along the strip of Chinese eateries along Dominion Road, Barilla is easy to spot any day of the week. Why? The place is always heaving with people, often with queues out the door. Barilla is Auckland's worst-kept secret when it comes to the best dumplings in town.
Whether boiled, fried, or steamed, the dumplings are handmade fresh each day in a variety of mouthwatering flavours, and at wallet-happy prices too. They're especially great with everyone's favourite side dish - the French beans with spicy salt.
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- HolidaysClosed
Reviews
Experienced the 'famous Barilla Dumplings' the other night with friends. Really affordable ($12 each for 6 of us!!), heaps of dumplings (they come out with plates of about 20 per flavour), but there wasn't a huge amount more to rave about really. The green tea was good. The other dishes were ok. The chicken, vege and noodle dish was boring -some tiny shreds of chicken (if you could find them), some sliced cabbage (woohoo) and some noodles. The deep fried beans were good but probably only cos they were quite different to anything I had tried before. The biggest dissapointment of all was that there was no prawn dumpling option. You can get pork and prawn, but no plain prawn -and many at our table were looking forward to prawn dumplings. Plus they kinda over do the pork option in general. Specially for someone who isn't really a pork fan - it was quite dissapointing.
Seriously some of the best dumplings I've ever eaten. There are so many varieties to choose from and they're all such great value for money - between $8-13 (from memory) for 20 dumplings, and you choose whether you want them steamed or fried. They have some delicious other dishes as well, we had some chinese broccoli one time and also some very tasty noodles with chicken and vegetables. But you do come here for the dumplings. The atmosphere and general ambiance of the restaurant is not anything special, but worth a trip here for a cheap and delicious meal of dumplings. They even sell them frozen to take away so you can cook them yourself! I am craving the pork and cashew dumplings as we speak.
The pork dumplings are my favourite and delicious. Okay so my rating here is based purely upon the food and price. Inside is a plasticy decor of flimsy chairs and sticky tables and I'm not sure if the staff even know that they're staff there! It's quite hard to tell who's a diner and who's a waiter/tress since they don't seem to acknowledge you if you try get their attention! But back to the food. The bottom of the dumplings are crispy and chewy and the fillings are flavourful and delicious. The beef and onion is also a good choice. Pork and cashew was nice too. $10-11 for 20 dumplings = awesome.
If dumplings are your darling, go there. Make sure to order them steamed or fried, rather than plain boiled, and try any of the fillings – there aren’t likely to be any total duds, I reckon. Definitely try the pork and fennel (pretty intensely fennel, but subtlety is often overrated). The lamb fillings are a bit fattier in the mouth, but we’re not counting calories here. The shui mai are big and wondrous, and everything on the menu has that umami-ness that means it has probably had a bit of, ahem, enhancement. So maybe don’t go too often, and don’t plan much for the hours following – a nap, maybe. Oh, forgot to mention that it’s very affordable. $9-11 for a huge steamer of 20 dumplings – absurd!
Where else can you get dinner for eight bucks? That is for twenty vegetarian dumplings. Barilla is especially good if you are heading over the road to the Capitol to see a film. When I was running late to catch a movie, the friendly and efficient staff even transferred our leftover dumplings into a takeaway container- and didn't grumble about it either. It gets really busy in here, so I would recommend going on a weeknight- maybe before cheap tuesday at the movies??
