Sitalaxmi Pai
I agree that the time we visited the restaurant would be busiest time of the year. I came here for Chinese New year opening Night 2018 with a small group of friends. The staff took the orders and did not notify us that it will take around 40-45 minutes for our items to get delivered. As starters, they got two sets of prawn dumpling but all the other food items were served to us really late. Also, it looked like the waiters were confused with the food order and kept on getting wrong items to the table till the final orders were delivered. My review for this restaurant is bad customer service, poor time management, overpriced food items, and not keeping the customers informed before hand.
John Murphy
I felt like I was not wanted in this restaurant. It was expensive and the food was at best average. It was very obvious that the Asian people present were placed in a different light to the rest of the diners. At our table (six diners) we all agreed we had made a mistake selecting this restaurant to eat. To top it off we were advised by a Chinese Australian diner that we were charged more for our meal than the Chinese diners as we left the restaurant. She explained the different colour menus were for Chinese and then anyone else and were different in price. We were all disgusted.
AMC
Horrible.
We came here before going to the Aladdin musical at the Capitol Theatre. It was one of the few restaurants in Chinatown that we could get into.
Terribly overpriced. Extremely slow service and dim sims that were still frozen inside served to us and at least two other tables.
There was a wooden peg on our plate. They obviously use them in the kitchen for whatever reason and forgot to remove it before serving. I was just about to take a mouthful of food and the waiter reached over the top of me to grab the peg I had placed in the middle of the table.
The owner lady was yelling orders in Chinese at the wait staff in the middle of the restaurant.
And then there were the dead fish floating amongst the barely live fish in the tank that the 'fresh fish' are plucked from prior to cooking.
Avoid this restaurant at all costs. Wish there was a zero star rating as 1 star is being generous.
Paul Slater
The Hot & Sour soup was thickened beef stock with shredded bamboo shoot and sliced mushroom. It was neither hot nor sour. The salt and pepper squid was very good (that gets 2*) but the Kung Po chicken had dried chillies with no flavour or heat and whole green peppercorns which ruined the palate if you bit on one. The prices were ridiculous, the wine especially so. The best bit though was watching one of the staff/management/family spitting into the rubbish bins on prominent display in the restaurant. Appalling place, best avoided.
Hemachandran Panicker (Hem)
It was Chinese new year opening night... So yes it was a really crowded day. I got my first warning when I comfortably got a table for 8. We really didn't have a choice as we were starved and just had to have some food. After placing the order, I read the Google maps reviews and saw a barrage of 1 stars. There.. My second warning. But it was a bit late as we had ordered the food already. I mean at that point I was ok with medicore food as well cos we were that starved. In 15 mins or so.. came two prawn dumpling sets which pretty much vaporised with the amount of hungry people around the table. Well, no luck for the veggos. Then the real waiting started. A good 30 mins after that there is still no sign of any food. Once someone got a wrong dish to our table looked around confusingly and left. What a tease. When we went asking... The waiter said he is new and he only know to bring the food to the table but didn't know when it will be ready.
After some more waiting came the mediocre food that we expecting. But a special mention goes out to the so called BBQ Barramundi. I guess it was an anorexic barramundi that they hand-picked for our dish, which by they way was a total rip off for 50 dollars.
The lesson learnt is that it's never too late to up and leave if you see these many negative reviews on Google maps.
Adrian Bielenberg
Extremely overpriced and very average food (examples - steamed rice $4 pp, fried rice $20 per large plate, $15.80 for 12 tasteless dumplings). Horrible service. Staff were not at all helpful - we had to get up to get our own water. Do not stop here.
Chanel Gilmore
Very good food and perfect portions.
Silvie Gunawan
I love the crispy pork leg. My kids love the duck BBQ.
Mike Sheen
The food was not the problem with this restaurant - it was ok - nothing fantastic, though.<br/><br/>The problem is the disorganised chaos with the staff, and the systems in place they use to get orders to tables, and the disgusting way the senior staff treat the young wait staff.<br/><br/>Upon arriving and walking upstairs, we waited at the top of the stairs to be seated. Despite numerous vacant tables in the restaurant, we had to wait whilst staff cleaned the table right next to the entry - which as I later learnt was not the ideal place to sit as it was right next to the kitchen entry - so a constant throng of wait staff jostled past my seat.<br/><br/>After being seated, I observed a middle aged Asian man (whom I later learnt was staff) poke a young Asian waitress in the ribs with enough force for me to tell from the look on her face it hurt quite a bit. I watched as her gait for the next few minutes revealed she was in ongoing pain from this.<br/><br/>What a way to treat your staff.<br/><br/>They have a peg system in place - old wooden clothes pegs, all moist - with black handwritten ink on them corresponding to table numbers. When an order is ready from the kitchen, one of these pegs is placed on the side of each dish so the staff know what table the dish is to go to. The pegs are not washed between use - If someone were to take a culture of the pegs or the edge of a dish the pegs have been on they'd see something interesting, I'm sure.<br/><br/>Despite this system, I watched as several times staff delivered the wrong dish to the wrong table - diners dived their chopsticks from their mouths into the dish and took a few morsels only to have the dish whisked away by staff and taken to another table. Ewwww.<br/><br/>When you place your order, they write it on a hand-written chit and leave it on the table. As each dish arrives, they cross it off the paper chit. It blows around and off the table constantly - most likely as we're near the entrance and have wake turbulence from the staff poked into action constantly by the mean senior staff.<br/><br/>We'd ordered 3 simple dishes to share and a jug of club lemon - which amounted to $76.40 - somewhat expensive for what we got. I would have expected about half that.<br/><br/>It would take so little effort and change to make this restaurant a pleasure to dine at.<br/><br/>I've put Yin Li Suchuan on my list of restaurants to recommend to people I don't like.
Sir And Mlady Dine Out
This is a split level place right in the heart of Chinatown on Dixon Street and as a result it can sometimes confuse you. There's a smallish outside area at street level that some may see as the whole restaurant. However upstairs on the first floor is the main restaurant. . As it was a blustery night we went upstairs. It certainly is a Chinese restaurant - with the look and feel that you'd expect. The tables all seemed to have a hotplate that looked like a giant record stuck there in the middle, but we didn't order dishes that ended up using this device.
Critic
Where do I start. On record one of the worst restaurants I have been to in Sydney. <br/><br/>The food (cashew chicken) was so salty I needed to drink alot of water. athe chicken tastes like it was soggy and bad. The prawn rice was salty too, but not as bad.<br/><br/>The service was disorganized to say the least. we ordered dumplings, and 2 tables that came 20 mins after us received their order of dumplings before us. The wait staff were even so confused running from table to table not knowing which table had ordered what, often taking away the food back to the kitchen. <br/><br/>The prices are exhorbitant for the food they offer, bland.and salty. Unreasonable and unacceptable!<br/><br/>The wait staff were friendly and doing their best. This is definitely a case of bad management. overall experience poor and leaves a bad taste in our mouths (literally and figuratively). I should have paid attention to previoua reviews before steppiing. Please heed this advice.<br/><br/>Pictures not worth taking
MasterChef
Love this places lots of chilli and great spices in food the crab with ginger and spring onion was delicious.The beef Sichuan was very tender and great taste .The chicken feet here is a specialty but not game to try it. I Would go back here again .
Zizzle&spice
Do yourself a favor and avoid this restaurant at all costs. We made a spur of the moment decision to eat here en route to a concert and we regretted it so badly. Ridiculously overpriced ($28 for vegetables) for the abysmally small servings. Also the food tasted like cardboard- the squid was like chewing on rubber and the satay chicken was gross and slimy - also tasteless. Just avoiiiiiiiddddd!!!!!!!!
FigureGirl Jax Tregidga
This was EASILY one of the WORST restaurants I have been to.<br/>I would give it a minus score if I could. <br/><br/>We decided to make an uninformed decision and randomly selected this restaurant for dinner after a beautiful evening show at Hyde Park. <br/>How wrong we were. <br/>Firstly, the table service was reasonable, a timid Chinese girl served us and hovered around us the whole time, which was a little unnerving. <br/>We were quite parched after our walk, and ordered two beers. They were warm.<br/>The bowls we were going to eat out of had not been cleaned properly… We shouldn’t have ignored the first two issues… <br/>We ordered Duck pancakes to start, the actual pancake was dry and cracked around the edges. Old.<br/>The roast duck was cold and dry, the sliced cucumber and spring onion was old and dried out… They were clearly pre-sliced over a day or the night before. Extremely disappointing. <br/>When the mains came (sweet and sour chicken and combination fried rice) it was slimy “chicken” and the fried rice was completely flavorless, slimy and chewy as well.<br/>I genuinely couldn’t eat any of it, and when the girl came over to ask if I wanted another warm beer, and a take away container, I declined both, told her I was extremely dissatisfied with the meal and wanted to speak to the manager. My husband was completely famished and had to eat some of it, (we had been to two different favorite Chinese restaurants, BBQ King House [closed for renovations] and Golden Century [45 minute wait]) so by then, he was desperate to eat, but it was such a small amount as it started to actually make him feel sick.<br/>When we had to pay the bill, we were met with a surly female manager who was confrontational and claimed improper English when I was asking questions. <br/>She flat out refused the fact that the pancakes were complete s**t and kept repeating herself saying that I was wrong, and they were “Beijing specialty”… Specialty that was old vegetables, dried up old duck and pancakes that clearly were old, left out over hours to dry out?!... Ridiculous.<br/>I asked for a reduction in price due to such poor standards of food and complete lack of edibility and was met with a flat out refusal and mutterings in Chinese. <br/>I paid our ridiculous $108.70 bill and informed another couple coming up the stairs as I was going down, that it would behoove them to steer clear of this place. <br/>A total rip off for westerners (as I have just been reading reviews that say there is a western menu and Chinese menu with different prices) disgusting customer service.<br/>DO NOT EVER EAT HERE!!!!
Mp
I'm sorry to have to do this for the place but waiting for over an hour to discover that they had forgotten a third of our orders is a bit concerning. The yum cha menu looked alright, but when they came they were a bit lacking in flavour. Good if you want a quick snack, otherwise best to find a better place for yum cha.
Cisso
Avoid this poor excuse for a Chinese Restaurant in the heart of Chinatown Sydney. Worst Chinese ever. San Choy Bow was abysmal. Had to hunt for the seafood in the Rice Noodle Seafood dish. Mongolian Chicken smothered in chillies..chicken looked boiled. Pork dumplings dry and tasteless. Staff not proficient in English.
Derek
Tasteless, expensive and you queue to pay. We tried pot luck going to Yi Li before a concert just around the corner. BBQ duck was tasteless, cut into small pieces so you couldn't see where it came from. Jelly--like Hoisin sauce on the thick, uneven pancakes allowed you to swallow. Pork ribs also tasteless with a few bits of shallots and chillies on the plate. Chinese spinach was served in a greenish, MSG (?) goop the likes of which I have never seen before. Fish awaiting their fate stared at us through the algal blooms in their tank. Luckily we had some wine to dull our senses. That was fine. <br/><br/>When it came time to pay, there was a queue of 10 people with one cashier jumping between her register, calculator, and paper orders she couldn't read. <br/><br/>And the floor was sticky. <br/><br/>We were really sorry for the couple next to us who had travelled all the way from Israel to experience this embarrassment to Sydney tourism. Luckily Sting and Paul Simon made up for sad start to the evening. <br/><br/>Highly NOT recommended.
Lpatullock
Is this the worst meal I have ever had?. Deep fried pork bones masquerading as pork ribs, tasteless fried rice and overcooked salt and pepper sqid. What a disaster!
Andrew Gates
Very Disappointed Tourist. The service was shockingly abysmal. The drinks list was whisked away without asking us if we wanted anything to drink. The food took far too long to arrive. When it did, we had to ask where the rice was - and so did the people at the next table. Far too much MSG. My wife is Chinese, and we agreed that this was the worst restaurant that we have been to in at least 5 years. If you are looking for a pleasant memorable experience of Sydney's Chinatown, give this place a very wide berth! We would have been better off with the street food than this crap.
Matt Bailey
Good lord this place is terrible.
Abu_16
Worst Asian restuarant I've ever been to.. The food was not fresh...salty and they put way too much MSG. It was really over priced and the serving was very small. Ordered 3 servings of dumpling there and it was so bad we didn't even finish it. One of the prawn dumpling had 1 tiny prawn and the rest were just dough! The service was bad too, the waitress serving us kept talking to us in Mandarin, even though we said we couldn't understand her. But the worst bit was when a group of chinese came in while we were eating and we noticed they were given a different set of menu. This is my first review as I have never experienced such bad food/service in my entire life. We ordered 6 dishes + prawn crackers + tea. Their tea was just average...but the tea was the best thing I had from this restuarant. Please stay away from this restuarant.
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