Spring Yunnan a proud and personal take on regional Chinese cuisine

Thank heavens for picture menus, that's all I can say. Especially at a proudly regional newish restaurant such as Spring Yunnan.

It's not easy to get a fix on Yunnanese cuisine, because this mountainous south-western Chinese province is home to 26 of China's 56 ethnic groups – so your typical Yunnanese menu keeps everyone happy by specialising in everything.

That means not only large pots of steamy broths, soft rice noodles, sweet pancakes, but a range of tongue-tingling Sichuan dishes and the more familiar honey prawns and lemon chicken.

Owner Bruce Yang of Eastwood's Meet Chonqing Sichuan restaurant and his partners decided it was high time Sydney and Yunnan got together at the table, and they were right.

It's a casual, friendly, welcoming space with a bright, cheerful young team, both on the floor and in the open kitchen led by head chef Frank Feng.

The place is full of character, with its colourful muralled walls, hanging textiles, rustic tables and embroidered chairs. It's also full of couples, families, students, children and a constant stream of Hark Hark food delivery couriers, the popular Asian equivalent of Deliveroo.

I'm here for the guo qiao mi xian or cross-the-bridge noodles ($22.80), a superbowl that shares the same DNA as Southern China's steamboat and Sichuan's yin-yang chilli hotpot.

First comes a big communal bowl of still-bubbling chicken and pork stock, then a tray of chilled and pre-plated finely sliced raw meat and fish, some deep-fried pork, vegetables, beancurd skin, garlic chives, a raw quail's egg and a bowl of round rice noodles similar to neighbouring Vietnam's bun noodles.

Look to the helpful signs on the tabletop for the DIY instructions regarding the order in which you add things – the key is beating the quail egg and dipping the raw meat in the beaten egg and then into the soup.

There's not a huge amount of flavour until everything is in, but there is a great sense of nourishment, and the noodles have carefully been kept al dente to allow for the extra cooking time.

Pan-fried dumplings with black rice vinegar ($10.80) are big, thick-skinned and pork-filled, their browned bottoms both crisp and wonderfully chewy, reminiscent of old-school caramel dumplings.

The picture menu shows a pretty dish of minced beef with cumin ($20.80) served with mandarin pancakes and shredded cucumber.

It's not as pretty in reality, being more of a chunky, oily stir-fry with leeks, but the flavour of the tenderised beef is terrific, backed by the slow warmth of cumin and chilli. There's more chilli burn in a great dish of whole, braised barramundi ($28), swimming in a thick, red-oily, ma po tofu sauce.

It sounds counter-intuitive to finish on ham cakes ($8.80), but these are sweet, round shortcake biscuits stuffed with sweet, pulled pork; the sort of thing that's comfort food if you've grown up with it, and exotic if you haven't.

This end of town is changing fast, as smart, new Asian start-ups and slick franchisees seemingly open every week, but Spring Yunnan is a prouder, more personal, home-cooking take on regional Chinese cuisine.

You may not get quite what you expect, even with the picture menu, but my advice is to just go for it, and enjoy whatever you do end up getting.

The low-down

Vegetarian Pretty much everything has pork in it,

Drinks BYO (licence pending) plus plum juice, iced soy milk, pu' er teas,

Pro tip Servings are super-sized – bring more than one friend.

Go-to dish Guo qiao mi xian (classic Yunnan rice noodle soup), $22.80.

Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.