Location: 23-25 Anderson Creek Road, Doncaster East
Cuisine: Chinese, Yum Cha
Originally just a restaurant specialising in Beijing cuisine, Happy & Lucky Family decided to hop onto the Doncaster yum cha bandwagon. Having tried the Beijing cuisine originally and finding the food different, but rather bland, we decided to give the place a second chance and headed there for a yum cha lunch.
I have mixed feelings about the place. The food itself was good. The chef got all the textures and flavours right, and the prawn dishes were especially well done. It was a pity there wasn't a huge range of dishes to try, and most were the just the typical yum cha dishes. I had expected there to be a few more Beijing style dishes to distinguish itself from the all the surrounding yum cha places. (If you don't already know, Doncaster is renowned for yum cha, with at least 6 places that do it off the top of my head.) The other problem with the food was that was not quite hot enough - it bordered on warm. Understandably, the trolleys had to pass through the bulk of the restaurant before getting to our table, but at the same time, one would assume that at least the inside of the food remained reasonably hot (the trolleys are supposed to be insulated), which was not the case.
The service was very gruff and not particularly pleasant. Our crockery was pretty much dropped in front of us. The tea took forever to come out, and when we asked for chilli sauce, we ended up with tomato sauce. The only exception was the guy who refilled the teapots, who would come past and apologise for us waiting for our tea to be filled despite us not having waited all that long.
The layout of the restaurant (including long rectangular tables instead of round tables) also made it quite difficult for the trolleys of food to past through the place, and particularly annoying to spread food out on the table.
All in all, I did not end up very full, but there wasn't much else I wanted to eat (it was all repeats) so we left. Prices were reasonably cheap for yum cha - $3.50 small, $4.50 medium, $5.50 large - but we suspect it is only because the place has just started providing yum cha, once it settles down a little, no doubt we will see those prices jump!!
My own recommendation for yum cha remains the same - go to Taipan.
Overall rating: 6.5 / 10
1 comment:
Hi there. I went to HLF two weeks ago and found it pretty good and cheap. But in the past 15 years those two restaurants at Anderson Creek have had roller coaster performances due to the constant changing of owners, including a few indifferent ones.
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