China Doll: Breathing new fire to old favourites
Growing up as a little girl at the Chinese Dragon Café, Miriam Solomons didn’t need to know how to cook. The youngest child of Hanchen Suan and Geechin Chang, she remembers that her parents started small and had to work hard. While her mother worked in the kitchen producing 
signature dishes like the Indonesian prawns, diced chicken with nuts and the egg foo young, her father would man the front of house. When they retired after the day’s work, it was to their home above the restaurant. Now, with the Chinese Dragon Café out of the family’s hands, Miriam is dedicated to a new restaurant. China Doll offers the eating experience she and her son Jonathan wanted to deliver – a combination of traditional favourites and exciting new fusion flavours.
Miriam
It’s been a year since they threw open the doors on a new restaurant at Alfred House Avenue. With its interiors decorated with fun, vibrant paintings (some enormous enough to dominate a whole wall) and leather upholstered chairs, it couldn’t be further from where they started out – with a little outlet in the parking lot of the Chinese Dragon Café. Johann Jayasekera, Miriam’s nephew, is the chef behind the wheel. He brings to his work here what he learned studying commercial cookery at William Angliss Institute in Melbourne, Australia and his experience as an apprentice at George’s Restaurant in Melbourne. His most valuable on the job training though likely came from the decade he spent working at the Chinese Dragon Café itself as a senior chef.
When they began China Doll, Johann did much of the cooking himself. Now with a much larger team and orders coming in not just from the restaurant but for deliveries across the city and catering gigs too, he has a much larger team to call on.
The menu is also constantly expanding – often taking off in unexpected directions. Not only does China Doll serve Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian and Chinese influenced dishes, they’ve been known to throw a killer barbeque, make their own burgers from scratch and even turn out the occasional hopper. For Johann, this feels organic and follows in the footsteps of international trendsetters like Momofuku. Now they’re also 
looking at resurrecting some of the dishes Miriam’s mother made famous at the Chinese Dragon Café including the hot butter cuttlefish and pepper chicken.
Johann
What Johann hopes will set them apart is their continued commitment to quality: “everything is prepared in house – from the sauces to the pastes,” he says adding that the seafood they use is always fresh as are other ingredients. Their delivery service is popular and maintaining the restaurant as a hub has its own challenges – for Johann though it’s the best way to maintain quality.
Johann manages China Doll’s Twitter and Facebook accounts and has been one of the few local chefs to really make his presence felt and take feedback from diners on social media. He knows that interesting, off beat dishes can help generate a buzz online.
The last year has been challenging in more ways than one, and their first anniversary brings with it some sadness. When Jonathan – who served as the CEO of China Doll – passed away recently, the family was left bereft, but Miriam says it’s meant that she’s even more invested in making a success out of the restaurant he co-founded. It’s where Jonathan’s heart was and she’d like to see it thrive.