Carly Jin owes her happiest food memories to the collision of different histories and cultures. Jin, the founder of - a late-night bar and eatery that’s moved into the old Bar Brose site on Darlinghurst’s Victoria Street - grew up in Harbin, a city in the northeastern Heilongjiang province of China.
“My family are Korean migrants; they moved to Harbin many, many years ago and I’m fourth-generation,” she tells SBS.
Harbin is shaped by its proximity to Russia, Japan, Korea and Mongolia. It was virtually built from scratch by and as a result, a huge Jewish population moved there. “I grew up eating sourdough bread, cheese and butter and my grandmother taught me to appreciate Japanese food, such as sea urchin,” Jin says.
Ginkgo Bar and Dining is a love letter to Harbin, where dumpling houses sit alongside family-owned Russian restaurants, and punchy flavours and heavy textures offset sub-zero temperatures. The yum cha menu – served until 3am – features 16 types of dumplings, including versions incorporating steamed sea urchin and Harbin-style wine sausage.
Unagi thread rolls at the Harbin-style Ginkgo Bar and Dining. Source: Ginkgo
For lunch and dinner, there’s bao stuffed with smoked pork knuckle, salad of smoked tofu skin and soft-shell crab fried rice with spicy xo sauce. Jin says that her xo sauce, which is made the old-fashioned way (“seafood only, no sugar”) sums up Ginkgo’s focus on house-made ingredients.
“It’s all about strong flavours and a home-style menu. Although some of the dumplings are my own creation, the majority of the food we offer is what I ate as a child,” she explains.
The sea urchin and baby spinach dim sum tastes like oyster with natural umami flavours, so it doesn’t need sauce, according to Jin. Then there’s the Ginkgo sausage puff: a handmade wine sausage similar to Chinese lap cheong but based off a Harbin recipe she nabbed off a friend of her grandmother’s. The sausages are air-dried and steamed before fresh shallots and mushrooms are added.
The Gingko sausage puff is made from handmade wine sausage. Source: Ginkgo
For Jin, Ginkgo symbolises a new chapter for her family.
“Ginkgo is really all about delicious, home-cooked food. My grandmother passed away a few years ago and I really miss her.”
At the moment, Ginkgo Bar and Dining is a pop-up as Jin experiments with the new late-night dining formula in a city where “late night” is a near extinct concept. But with help from a few cocktails, like the Dragon’s Breath – a concoction of of dragon fruit, Wyborowa Vodka and green tea foam – Jin is hoping Ginkgo is here to stay.
231A Victoria St, Darlinghurst
Mon-Thu 5pm-midnight; Fri 5pm-3am; Sat noon-4pm, 5pm-3am; Sun noon-4pm, 5pm-1am
