Happy Family Restaurants — Restaurant in Melbourne

We've been coming here for a bit over 2 years ( fairly regularly) since we moved into the area.

Cannot fault the service and friendly smile of the lovely lady behind the counter ( I don't know her name) and she always gives us vegan snacks with our orders.

A great range of food and love they have an extensive vegetarian/ vegan menu.

It must have been in the last 12 months though that the quality of food has dropped significantly.

Dishes like the vegan Mongolian "Beef" and kung bao "chicken" , while they have a decent enough taste have pretty much become filled with filler veggies like cabbage and tonnes of oil. The kung bao "chicken is not even spicy and is very dry and overcooked.

The vegan lemon "chicken" has become mostly batter and very little of the mock meat. And is either overcooked so the batter is hard or is quite sloppy and not crunchy. Again the sauce seems to have a tonne of oil in it.

Most dishes that have veggies are usually filled with cabbage and again I cannot stress enough, the amount of oil is sickening.

The fried veggie rice is gluggy and is just rice with what appears to be frozen mixed veggies ( the type you find in the supermarket freezer) thrown in and that's it.

When we first ate out of here in 2021 it wasn't like this at all. The food was fresh, hot, delicious and nowhere near as much oil was used. The serving sizes were very good for the price and you got what you paid for. Unfortunately now when you order something you don't get what you pay for .... for example they used to do a Tomato and mock lamb dish and as time went on the amount of meat in it dropped significantly and you'd end up with what was basically a container of stewed tomatoes and a few pieces of mock lamb. Take away Containers used to be filled right up to the brim and now they've been only half filling them .

It's such a shame that they've gone this way in recent times as we really loved the place and the owners were such lovely people . Maybe the owners have changed? I'm not sure.

Best of luck in the future and I hope you take on the genuine feedback people leave as the locals really want to support your business and have you around for as long...

Updated review (Dec 2024): Two years ago we order takeaway based on a combination of having an extensive vegan/vegetarian menu and being relatively highly rated. I raved about it (see the review) and being back at grandma’s this holiday, we wanted to order again. We noticed a few reviews in the last year were stating that something had changed and that it wasn’t what it used to be. This is definitely the case.

Food was oily and lacked any flavour. Veggies were soggy and tasted only like salt. There were still the same vego options as last year, but I’m not sure what happened. I don’t think we will order again next time we are here.

Grandma did still eat it without complaint, so giving 3 stars instead of 2.

Original review (Dec 2022): Ordered an all vegetarian/vegan dinner on Christmas Eve. Best Chinese food I’ve had in some time. Grandma, who never enjoys Chinese food, ate everything and praised it all. This restaurant made the...

There is nothing happy about the food or service at this restaurant. I ordered a lemon chicken to take away got home to find the chicken had been cut into such small pieces that there was more batter and barely any chicken. The supposed lemon sauce was honey with not trace of lemon at all. I rang up to inform them that they had made a mistake with my order where I was told their lemon sauce has honey and lemongrass yet the menu clearly described it as lemon chicken not lemon grass and honey chicken. When I rang to place my order I asked them about the lemon chicken and at no point did they say it was lemongrass and honey chicken as I would not have ordered it as I'm allergic to honey. It seem obvious that the proprietors of this restaurant are trying to make maximum money from cheap poorly made food and misleading. Don't waste your time or...