Where to find Brendan Pang’s famed prawn wontons in Sydney

Brendan Pang’s silky-skinned prawn wontons earned him a place on MasterChef Australia. Next month, Sydney diners will get a chance to try them for themselves, when the cookbook author and content creator hosts a one-night-only dinner at Annamese restaurant in Barangaroo.

While he may have been given the moniker “dumpling king” on the show, Pang had been folding wontons long before his 2018 television debut. He grew up in a Chinese-Mauritian household in Perth, spending his school holidays in the kitchen with his grandmother, learning how to roll dough, make fillings and pleat dumplings by hand.

After finishing in the top 10 of his season, Pang opened Bumplings, a Fremantle food truck housed in an Airstream, serving bang bang chicken dumplings, cheeseburger baos and other dim sum.

He has since stepped away from service, shutting Bumplings in 2024 to focus on his social platforms where he has built a following of more than 1 million. Pang recently moved from Taipei to Sydney, where he continues to develop recipes and produce content for online.

For his upcoming dinner, Annamese x Brendan Pang at The Streets of Barangaroo on May 6, Pang will serve his signature wontons – this time filled with prawn and scallops in a ginger and spring onion butter – as part of a seven-course menu, created in collaboration with Annamese executive chef Andy Pruksa.

The menu draws on both Vietnamese and Chinese-Mauritian influences. “I love Vietnamese food, I love street food. I’ve spent the last few years travelling around Asia, so any opportunity to collaborate and work with different cuisines, and put my own spin on it is really exciting to me,” Pang says.

With a new cookbook on rice out, Pang will be showcasing some of his favourite rice dishes on the menu. “I ate at Annamese recently, and one dish I really loved was the crispy rice cakes,” Pang says. “I wanted to do my spin on this Vietnamese dish, and make more of a Chinese filling with chicken and prawn, black fungus and water chestnuts.”

“It will be a bit like a fish cake, crumbed in rice then fried so it’s really crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, which we’ll serve with a caramelised vinegar dipping sauce.”

Chinese and Vietnamese flavours will also come together in a chicken salad, that will be equal parts Chinese saliva chicken and Vietnamese goi ga. “We’re sort-of fusing the two chicken salad recipes together. It will be a cold cut chicken in a sesame, chilli oil and ginger dressing, with crispy wonton crackers for texture.”

Dessert will lean into Annamese’s coastal theme for a banana fritter with palm sugar caramel. “We haven’t decided on an ice-cream yet, but I’m thinking pandan and coconut,” he says.

Pang’s four cookbooks, which are themed for dumplings, street food, noodles and rice, will also be available to purchase on the night, with Pang on hand to sign copies.

Annamese x Brendan Pang at The Streets of Barangaroo is priced at $139pp for a seven-course meal & beverage on arrival. The event, which is presented by Good Food Events, will also include a Q&A with Brendan Pang, hosted by Good Food app editor Erina Starkey. Tickets now available from Humanitix.