The soups at Dor Dor are a hefty size. Photo: Martin Conway.
If I were a city dweller, and not housed 40 km of kangaroo-dotted highway away in the country, I dream my evenings would be spent hopping from eatery to eatery. Bowls of steaming broths would be a regular feature of my nightly quests to fill my tummy with affordable but delicious things from around the capital.
Late-night venturing from my mythical Canberra apartment would lead me to the best of Canberra’s quick and cheap eats; my cooktop always shiny clean from lack of use.
Alas, as it stands, these types of nights are bookended by an hour return trip from my rural idyll. So when it does happen, I have to make the most of my explorations.
On one of these recent ventures, I found myself at Dor Dor on Cooyong Street in Braddon.
Tucked away under the large apartment blocks that replaced the tenement-style towers backing onto the Canberra Centre a few years ago, Dor Dor feels like the late-night eatery of my city-dwelling dreams: bold flavours, delightfully confronting and easy on the pocket.
Dor Dor is a little hard to spot on the street, so look out for the neon infinity sign in the window. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Arrive here after dark and you’ll be greeted by a mind-bending infinity light stating the business name. Despite the neon sign, the restaurant can be a little hard to spot among the identical shop frontages.
Through the front door, you’ll find unfussy decor and a decidedly confusing ordering system that gave me the type of sweats I hadn’t had since the Higher School Certificate exams.
Luckily, despite the language barrier, the staff are friendly and helpful, rushing over to ensure we have figured out the system. This involves choosing a soup base, $5 of included ingredients, and optional extra ingredients, which are marked down on a small ordering form and delivered to the counter.
With our order deciphered and in the hands of the chef, we took to translating the origin story on the signs written in Mandarin that are stuck to the wall.
With the inevitable lost-in-translation effect of internet-based translation tools, it appears that Dor Dor has a history dating back to 1997 at a Yunnan restaurant serving Sichuan-style cuisine.
This original iteration evolved and morphed over the years through a number of restaurants operating under a number of different names and eventually made its way to Australia via Hong Kong.
The dining room is cute and unfussy. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Slightly more informed but still confused by the long and winding origin story of Dor Dor, our soup arrived with the thick and confronting scent of Sichuan peppercorns, and there was no mistaking that the heart of this food lies with the original Yunnan restaurant that was serving Sichuan dishes.
My soup, which was simply named on the menu Spicy and Sour Rice Noodles, was in line with Sichuan soups I’ve had all over Canberra: a meat based-broth, likely pork, heavily flavoured with a combination of red chillis and Sichuan peppercorns and an almost tomato-like flavour to the base that I can only describe with the word ‘red’, if red was a flavour.
The broth was spicy, Sichuan-tingly with notes of fermented black beans, all in good measure without being too much to handle, and with my choice of wood ear mushrooms, cabbage and chives to accompany the included noodles, pork mince, bean sprouts and coriander, it was a nicely balanced meal in a fairly large serving.
My dining companion, however, had something neither of us had ever tasted before.
Named on the menu Hot and Spicy Rice Noodles in Sichuan Style, we were met with a soup that could only be described as the pure essence of Sichuan peppercorns, and it made me realise that the Sichuan soups I’m used to heavily rely on accompanying ingredients like red chillis to round out their flavour profiles.
This soup, in addition to the slight sweetness of the broth, had the deep earthiness of the peppercorn with nothing to mask it. The intensity of the Málà effect (tingling and numbing) was cumulative and confronting, leaving me thinking that this soup is not for the uninitiated, a situation that forced a soup swap at our table.
It may sound like we didn’t enjoy this soup, but I actually really enjoyed it, although my dining companion may not be able to say the same. The sweetness paired with the earthy and slightly bitter peppercorns was a moreish combination for me. It’s rare to taste something these days that’s unlike anything you’ve tasted before, so I was all in, and for a mere $20 for this transformative culinary journey, I’ll definitely be back, city dweller or not.
Dor Dor is located at 65 Cooyong Street, Braddon and is open 6 days a week for lunch and dinner, Tuesday to Sunday.
