Happy and Lucky Family Chinese Restaurant

Location: 23-25 Anderson Creek Road, Doncaster East
Cuisine: Chinese, Yum Cha
Previous Reviews: 12/04/09

Complimentary Soup

As with most Chinese restaurants in the suburbs, the meal starter is a complimentary bowl of [what you would call] 'house' soup. This one was the same as most others.

3.5pound crab with noodles in garlic and ginger sauce

At $14.80 per pound, the crab was quite fresh and the sauce nicely done. Not quite enough meat on the crab itself though, as the shell was quite thick and heavy.

fish fillet with vegetables

A simple dish with simple flavours, fish fillets were tender and fresh, stir-fried with carrots and Chinese broccoli.

Lamb Casserole

One of the special highlights of the restaurant. The casserole was brought out with a camping stove and a plate of fresh bok-choy. Soup was full of flavour, and there was endless lamb and dried bean curd. Having the vegies separate means that you can literally blanche it before you eat it, or have it soaked in the soup for as long as you like. Serving was huge. Price was around $27.

Happy and Lucky Special Chicken

We were a little disappointed about this dish - not because of the flavours, but because of the service. By the time this dish came out, we had pretty much finished our meal, and then when we saw the chicken (which was meant to be half a chicken), it didn't even look like half a chicken's worth. In fact, it seemed to be missing certain types of pieces, such as the thinner sections from the chicken's back, to the point where it was almost as though they had run out of whole chickens and just threw in bits and pieces of chicken breast meat, a wing and possibly a drumstick (I didn't see one, but someone may have eaten it).

Apart from that, the chicken skin was extremely crispy, and the golden brown topping of fried garlic, shallots and some chilli was aromatic and crunchy too.

Overall Impression: 7/10