3.75 stars. Great value and always generous portions. Decent feed for a Friday night.

Did you know that Jackpot Dining used to be called Jackpot Noodles? The first store opened near the casino (hence the Jackpot name) in the last century - just typing that makes me feel old! They’ve expanded over the years, and rebranded to Jackpot Dining about a decade ago. Whilst I’ve dined numerous times at some of their other branches, I’ve never set foot inside their Elizabeth St branch that is a stone’s throw from my office. The time finally came when I went for lunch with some colleagues. Ordering is done at the counter upon entry, and you’ll get a buzzer to collect your food, or a table number for items like the hot pots to be brought out to you. Cutlery, napkins etc are all self service. On this first visit, I ordered: * no.82 Malaysian curry laksa, $12.80 * no.101 pearl milk tea, $6 My food was ready within about 10 minutes. The laksa wasn’t the best I’ve had, but a fairly competent version and decent value for money. It came with two types of noodles, and a commendable amount and variety of ingredients: prawns, tofu puff, fish balls, fish cake, squid, chicken, long beans, and bean sprouts. The broth had a mild kick - good for wider/mass appeal, but I would’ve liked more punch and depth to the flavours and spice level. I wouldn’t particularly recommend the pearl milk tea - it was fairly average and the pearls too far on the soft end of the texture spectrum. Neither sugar nor ice were customisable (thankfully the standard sweetness was fine for me), and the drink was served in a narrow, square-shaped glass which made me wonder as to the volume you get vs a takeaway cup. While $6 is an entirely reasonable price for such a drink, I’d rather spend that amount in a specialist BBT store to get better tea and pearls. There’s quite a bit of seating inside though it’s mostly setup for groups up to 4; larger groups will need to rearrange some furniture. We went for an early lunch so had plenty of tables to pick from, but by the time we left around 12:30pm the place was full with dine-in customers and queues in both ordering and food collection areas. Looks like the well priced meals and quick turnaround is a winning formula!