China Red

Technology has come a long way since I was a small, innocent child. Tonnes of metal fly through the sky every day (mostly safely); gamma radiation from galactic bubbles abounds; and people cheerfully wear clothes made of magical man-made fibres. At the same time, the intertubes have revolutionized our lives and information swirls endlessly through pipes, blessing us with almost instantaneous satisfaction and answers through tubes. Water, however, still comes in bottles.

I only raise this because I have this great idea that's going to make me rich. I'm going to tell you, discretely, but you have to promise not to keep it to yourself.

You see, it occurred to me that if everyone uses water every day, then surely it would be great if we had instant access to it, just like we have instant access to information. Indeed, what we need is some sort of "water internet". This "waternet" would be, like the internet, a series of tubes, but in this case delivering water, instead of information, directly to our houses! It's a crazy, science-fiction idea (I know!), but perhaps one day it will be more than fantasy. Maybe in the future we'll be able to abandon bottled water for a "waternet", where water is delivered through "pipes". Maybe not in my lifetime perhaps, but hey, we can dream.

The future of dumplings is here already

Of course, not all technology is fantasy. While the "waternet" eludes us, the great dream of a dumpling internet (the legendary "dumplenet") has already arrived. Somewhere in the world, the Tim Berners-Lee of the dumpling world is resting on his laurels and these laurels can be found at China Red.

China Red is a small, tastefully discrete modern restaurant in a mall between Bourke St and Little Bourke, just off Melbourne's China Town and is truly a marvel of modern technology. While one day in the future we will surely be able to access the dumplenet from home, in 2010 we are limited to dumplenet cafes and China Red is at the forefront of this exciting phase of civilization.

Spring onion pancakes. Donuts, but with onions and crisp.

Using the amazing touchscreen dumplenet technology, Miranda, Helen and I (early adopters all) ordered our dumplings "on screen" and without recourse to human interaction!! This felt both staggeringly modern and never too far from being exciting. Screens were touched; virtual buttons were digitally manipulated and food arrived shortly after, albeit delivered by humans rather than the robots I hoped for. You can check what you ordered at any time, with delivered dishes signified with a digital steaming bowl icon, while food you've ordered but is not yet delivered shows as a rather sweet animated chef cooking up a storm.

We ordered spring onion pancakes which were exceedingly crisp and onionesque; green (snake?) beans with minced pork and chili; some chili oil dumplings; and some pot-stickers. The beans were wonderful and smoky, although the pieces of chili they were served with was staggeringly, blisteringly hot, while the chili oil dumplings were somewhere greater than good but less than spectacular. The pot-stickers (I know they had a proper name but I can't remember what it was) were also good, but no more, and came with a chewy and gelatinous wrapper.

Pan-fried dumplings (pot-stickers) and the blistering beans

All up the food was good city lunch time fare. Good dumplings, but not great, with a bit of digital fun watching the little man on the screen. Go, have lunch and pay very little, but most of all marvel at the first fledgling steps of what will become the great and ubiquitous dumplenet.

The Physics of Dumplings

The research team

Up until recently, high energy dumpling research in this country has languished, the victim of budget cuts and a research community focussed on turning tricks for the private sector. However, with the recent opening of the Hu Tong Dumpling Research Facility in Market Lane, primary dumpling research has started the long march into the 21st century. With the failure of the Large Hadron Collider, allegedly as a result of being sabotaged by a future God in order to save the world, the Hu Tong facility may be mankind's last greatest hope of understanding the dumpling, and the fundamental particles that theory suggests it consists of: the dumpleton and the souptrino.

Evidence of Garlic Field Theory

Professor Helen, Director of the Transport Dumpling Institute, leads the multinational research team at the Hu Tong facility, and she is joined by researchers Miranda, Kathryn, Stephen, Nicola, Dominica and, of course, Dr Phil and his research assistant. Today, the team was focussed on one of the major questions left in the field of dumpling research: the mystery of the Shao-long Bao dumpling. If the team could explain this strange phenomena, they would then have the basis for a truly Grand Unified Theory of Lunch.

Testing begins

Ever since Schrodinger put a cat in a box (maybe), scientists have longed to understand the drive to put things into other things, and never is this more manifest than the study of food. If cheese can be put into a sausage; if a sausage can be put into a pancake; then putting soup into a dumpling must be possible. And that is the grand claim of the Shao-long Bao dumpling - that these Schrodinger's dumplings exist in a state of quantum indeterminacy, where probability wavicles collapse into a flood of glorious soup once bitten.

The sauce substrate

So this was the purpose of today's experiment - to understand what was in the core of these four-dimensional quantum dumplings, and whether the dream of soup-within-a-dumpling is just a dream and nothing more. Previous attempts, involving the acceleration of souptrinos to near light-speed, had ended tragically with a dry cleaning bill of almost $16.

This time, however, the experiment started well. First a pork dumpling, flavoured with ginger and spicy with chili oil was used to fine tune the equipment. Lacking soup, or even the theory of soup, made it the perfect control subject.

Control dumplings. Perfect, and free from soup

Once the testing apparatus had been confirmed, two further rounds of dumplings, one a plain pork, the other vegetarian, and some braised leafy vegetables were assayed. The greens displayed high levels of garlic, which was consistent with predictions made using Dirac's little known Garlic Field Equation.

The test subjects

It was time. The Shao-long Bao dumplings were brought into the laboratory as a hush descended over the table. Was there actually soup inside these dumplings, or was current dumpling theory wrong?

The first result was disappointing. I lifted a dumpling too quickly from the bamboo petrie dish and tore the skin. While there was visual evidence of soup, none was tasted. On the second and all subsequent tests, however, evidence of soup was clearly identified. Celebration! Success! The soup/dumpling relationship, previously only theorized, was true! We arranged a hasty media conference and announce our results to the world. The rest, of course, is history. And lunch.

Pausing to celebrate