Jackpot Dining — Restaurant in Brisbane City

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...

Being a long time patron of Jackpot, our experience at the Elizabeth St restaurant on 10/10/2020 (our 22nd wedding anniversary) was most disappointing. We arrived just before 9pm to be told 'no dine in, takeaway only'. Well we had a hankering for Jockpot, so accepted the situation & ordered to take away. Admittedly of the 5 dishes we ordered, 3 we were trying for the 1st time: Fried Wonton (entre), sizzling pepper beef with noodles, & Honey chicken. The Wonton possibly may have been nice if served fresh in house, but by the time we made the 5min walk back to hotel, they were soft/soggy, & not plesent. The Honey chicken was over done, tasted like the oil it was cooked in, & the Honey sauce had the viscosity of water. Worst of all was the Sizzling pepper beef with noodles (a chef's Winter special), which, being neither sizzling nor peppery, should be renamed "Hokien noodle with trace amount of tasteless beef". Seriously, there were but a few measly strips of beef in the entire dish. In hind site we should have just ordered the regular pepper beef, which we've enjoyed many times before. Jackpot Toowong (where we normally eat) is 4-5 star, but by contrast, this experience at Elizabeth Street was 2 star at best. Shame the Albert Street branch had to close, as they...

We loved Jackpot on Elizabeth St. The food there is good, but because of one girl’s really bad and unacceptable service there, I only can give 2stars.

Recently, we order take away after work, it was 30mins to wait for 2 dishes eventhough only 4 or five people dining in and I am one of the two people waiting for dishes as others are eating already, which was understandable. E.g. something wrong with the kitchenware, or someone cooked something wrong. However, the blonde girl there gave my order to the other people person who was waiting, and when I was asking how long would my order be as I was here before him. She checked the dishes in the plastic bag and I saw that was my order, but she buzzed another electrical plate instead of mine. At that moment I was feeling lucky the other customer didnt take mine. However, yes, HOWEVER, this blonde (she is an Asian girl by the way) girl asked with impatient look instead of sorry look, WHERE IS YOUR RECEIPT?? Seriously, I paid money to buy food here, and I’m not asking food for free and she made the mistake, so where is that attitude from?

Then I talked to my working mates, one of them said, yes that blonde girl always like that.... No...