Golden Sea Dragon Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Coonabarabran

What?! Google should allow 0/5 star reviews because it's what this place deserves.

Poor quality attempted Chinese and "Malaysian" food that comes with a hefty price tag and topping it up with a devious front-of-house/manager/owner who was caught in the act of cheating our money. Our orders were messed up and we were served cold meat (possibly carelessly microwaved or leftover from a wrong order).

Driving through Coonabarabran and saw a Chinese place with a rating of over 4 stars not far away from our accomodation. Drove there but parking was confusing (angle parking with unmarked parking spots).

The menu was difficult to manoeuvre. Bad layout and no pictures. Bad sign #1. We noticed that the manager/owner who greeted us at the door. We felt like we were treated differently to the other guests on the night because we were of a particular background (or what he perceived us to be). Everyone who came in together or after us were personally escorted to their tables by the male manager while we had to wait for a junior wait staff to service us. Bad sign #2.

We ordered the "Malaysian" chicken laksa, fried rice and sizzling Mongolian garlic steak. Fried rice and Mongolian steak came out in less than 3 minutes. A bit too quick for a sizzling dish we wondered. Turned out the order was mixed up and we got a chicken dish instead. Got that replaced and was served cold beef. The beef looked like it was either microwaved and not cooked properly or was someone's wrong order from hours ago. Soggy vegetables and unappealing meat. We finally got served a sizzling beef dish after the third attempt, which tasted like a sodium party on a hot plate. Too much MSG, salt and artificial seasoning.

Chicken laksa tasted like a microwavable instant soup you'd find at your local supermarket. Bland, small portioned and didn't taste like Malaysian laksa at all. A small bowl costed $16.80!

Fried rice was burnt most likely due to over toasting in the wok and using undercooked rice. Oil content used was over the top. A visible layer of oil sediment on the plate after. Obvious use of frozen vegetables here.

Come bill payment time, we were overcharged by the front-of-house male manager/owner. He didn't know how much his own chicken laksa costed. Punched in $18.80 when it should be $16.80. We told him about his kitchen and wait staff's incompetence and he grudgingly offered to take $2 off the bill. If we hadn't noticed the overcharged laksa, it would have been a pretentious attempt at appeasing a displeased diner. He was sneaky in his attempts to turn the blame back on us.

Summary: Surprised how many patrons are willing to pay so much more for pretentious Chinese and Malaysian food; No tricking this reviewer growing up eating Chinese and Malaysian food. Very disorganised floor staffs and manager/owner who was blatantly trying to...

Coonabarabran is a long way to drive for a succulent Chinese meal, but Golden Sea Dragon is worth the trip. Purpose-built and ornately decked out with vibrant and elaborate decor imported directly from Hong Kong and China, it’s awe-inspiring. The red brick surrounds give way to a vestibule with a circular doorway that frames the expansive restaurant beyond. Carved wooden screens, where spotted deer nestle in a bamboo forest, insulate diners from takeaway comings and goings.

The history was hard to pin down. All I can confidently say is, Golden Sea Dragon is more than forty years old with two decades under the current owners. The original visionary sold it to open the equally elaborate Dynasty Chinese Restaurant in Launceston. You can see a through-line between his restaurants, with the eyecatching round windows at Coonabarabran switched out for octagonal ones in Launceston. Both spots have amazing inset ceilings, where tasseled lanterns painted with Chinese art hang as centrepieces.

With BYO strictly forbidden, we ordered their finest Chardy from a carved wooden bar with upturned green roof tiles (symbolising longevity) and red accents (symbolising good fortune). The Three Ponds Chardonnay ($38/bottle) arrived neatly wrapped in a paper serviette. It did the job against one of my childhood pinnacles of childhood Aussie-Chinese: the prawn cocktail ($14.90). Sure the prawns were quiet in flavour under Marie Rose sauce, but with crisp iceberg lettuce, it punched me right in the nostalgia.

Sizzling pot garlic seafood ($17.90) offered a collection of slightly better crustaceans, scallops, squid and white-fleshed fish in an aggressive amount of garlic, silky with corn starch. Vegetables—from snow peas, to baby corn, green capsicum and carrot cut with dainty edges—were left wonderfully crisp in the red vinegar pork spare ribs ($23.90). Think of it as a bone-in sweet’n’sour pork that tends more toward sour with a good chilli hit and batter that sticks to the meat like glue. The house-made barbeque pork in our XO chilli hot fried rice ($16.90) was so good it made me wish I’d ordered it as an entree. Sambal lamb ($28.90), which was carried out proudly with upwardly shooting flames, again reminded me of being a kid with my face eclipsed by a cloud of smoke emitting from sizzling Mongolian lamb. This spot brought back some of my best memories of being a kid, dazzled by exciting ways of presenting food, and colourful...

First review ive ever done... at first we were greeted warmly and nice, after being found a table for 6 instantly we were very happy, this the part in which the experience was soiled and spat on... we waited 2 hrs and 4 minutes to actually receive our mains, after the first encounter at trying to flag down someone to place the order we were ignored which was fine it looked busy... 4 attempts later and it wasnt... i got up and asked for service, straight away service... maybe that was our fault? I dont think so... again the wait began... 40mins before our entree showed itself alone and unaccompanied with its other side 10mins in between and there it arrives... speeding time up i got up yet again to politely ask where the mains were at and literally got laughed at by the crusty older kung foo lady i repeated and the message was clear... waited and my friend got up... meals came in literally 5mins gaps... until me and my mate waited while all the others finished because there meal was going cold... many attempts at explaining to them at the counter for some form of reasoning and got told... "you a boy dont come talk me like this you pay this amount all you" ( tried to translate) i told a mate to walk out as he just order nuggets and waited 2 hrs for macdonalds equivalent... complete joke and i told others the same that were comin in ... turned out the three people behind us waited 40 minutes and they were angry... joke... all the good reviews must be there family fake...