LIM'S Chinese Restaurant Glenelg — Restaurant in Adelaide

Worst Chinese Food Ever - Hands Down! Possibly one of the worst restaurant meals I have ever experienced and Certainly the worst Chinese Food ever - hands down!

Nice, well presented establishment in popular restaurants strip in a busy beach area. Bizarrely, the female staff were dressed in exact replicas of the Singapore Airlines flight attendant saris and that, unfortunately, is where the pretention of quality ends!

We started with a few entree dishes which were typical, frozen and deep fried fare. Not ideal but what you usually get at Chinese Restaurants these days.

The main course portions were small and expensive and some of the food was unidentifiable for what it was! The dishes were all presented on a large “padding” of nondescript vegetable material with a nominal allocation of the protein perched on top.

The Sweet and Sour Pork looked exactly the same as the Salt and Pepper Chicken and if you didn’t know they were different you probably wouldn’t be able to tell. The “Sizzling Satay Steak” came on a cold cast iron plate so no sizzle. I have eaten satay dishes on many occasions and the similarity to this and other satay dishes is purely coincidental. The beef was dark brown, tough and flavourless with no hint of satay whatsoever.

To be fair the fried rice was quite good and we tested this twice as we had to order a second serve to fill up given the minuscule quantities of the food we had be proffered.

I understand that quantity is not everything but quality is so we you get the double edged sword of both poor quantity and quality it leaves an indelible mark in your restaurant experience.

Service was acceptable.

This is a long standing Chinese Restaurant and we are absolutely surprised at how disgusting the food was. Please, if you don’t follow another review this year, do not go to this establishment. You will spend a lot of money and...

Let me put this plainly. This place is an old-school Caucasian-catering Chinese restaurant. It is a place that the mature Western person would go for 'Chinese food'. I am Asian and my partner is half-Asian and we have been to countless Chinese restaurants around Australia that are a million times better in terms of authenticity of food and great customer service. My accent is Aussie bogan and I called the restaurant 15 minutes prior to arriving and was told there was no need to book and to just come. The person's tone was very friendly. We turned up as schedule behind a Caucasian family, who by the way, were treated wonderfully by the 70 something year old Asian restaurant head. Once it was our turn in the line, he rudely and abruptly asked if I had a booking and I said no but we called in advance to check. The old man then rudely questioned, "When did you call??". After explaining I had called only 15 minutes ago, he looked angry, didn't say anything and gestured a teenage boy waiter to a table in the back corner of the restaurant. It amazes me that the only people the Asian restaurant head were rude and accusatory to were the ONLY two Asian guests that stepped foot into the restuarant. One star goes to the great customer service by all the young waiters and waitresses and the other star goes to the ok food, despite not being authentic or generous in portion for the price point (more foodcourt style Chinese food in Melbourne and stingy in portion size). This place benefits from being located in an affluent area in Adelaide with little competition. If you want good Chinese food, go elsewhere. A disappointing...

So, so disappointed. Tried the Honey Chicken tonight (takeaway) in the hopes Lims could be my "go to" for my rare treat of honey chicken, and it was genuinely the worst I've had in Adelaide. I was eating it within 10mins of collection - so no time to ruin the food - but the batter was soggy; zero crunchiness or crispness. The chicken was dry and tough and had a weird powdery texture to it (I'm pretty sure it wasn't the batter causing this powderiness because the batter was so soggy it had fallen off when I picked it up!). Some of the chicken pieces showed signs of having been pan fried before being battered: not cool. Finally, the Honey sauce was thin, bland, and colorless. I actually once had time to try cooking my own honey chicken, and it was surprisingly simple to get a respectable, enjoyable result: its just chicken chunks dipped in batter; deep fried; then thrown around in a simple sauce - I just can't see how a restaurant can get something so simple so wrong. So, if you want honey chicken, go to any other place. Sorry Lims, but please do better...especially for the price ($16.50 for just 10 - 12 pieces). Inept or...