Lilly in the Valley Chinese Dumpling Restaurant 百合居 — Restaurant in Melbourne

Sorry guys, but my experience dining-in was lacking to say the least.

As we sat down a take away customer at the counter diplomatically stated she had been waiting over 45 mins and was confused by the hold up as there were no other diners and needed to get home. From there on it was like being at the theatre and we had front row seats! Act 1: Delay & Confusion. (Still waiting after an hour) Act 2: The Missing Order. (Order was given to wrong customer) Act 3: The Fall Out. (Customers arrived and sat to dine-in and were ignored, so then got up and left. The next 4 take-away customers had wrong orders) Act 4: Take Away Hell...ensued. (Enough Said)

Our experience: We had no sauce with dumplings and had to ask (after a long delay due to customers orders being mixed up and staff loudly yelling at each other in another language). Very bland and tasteless dumplings, like they were frozen from a box. The pork buns were the only saving grace, even though they had forgotten them from our order and we had to wait another 40 mins. We had to continually swat at flies around the table. No idea where they came from but it was annoying and gross. I only wanted to try this place as it had a 4.9 rating on fb. Sadly, we were disappointed and won't...

My wife has a very.... pedantic palate on chinese food. As we are from Hong Kong, we always prefer the authentic Canronese taste. And it is a bit hard to find a yum cha or chinese restaurant that my wife "approves". So when we move to UFTG, we are like oh my god, we are not going to have chinese takeaway forever.

So I tried out their takeaway lunch. Not bad. And my wife went there with me another day for lunch. THANK GOODNESS. She approved it. She said the food tastes good.

She had her favourite Singaporean noodles, and she said its good because other restaurant usually cook them too wet. I am always a beef hor fan guy with or without egg gravy. Good stuff.

Cant comment on those dumpling or dim sum dishes, havent tried, and not quite interested.

They have kids utensils, but no baby high chair when we were there. Nice and friendly staff. I still cant figure out whether I should speak English, Cantonese or Mandarin when I call to order. All you can drink self serve water. Accept credit card. Dont think there is a min. amount.

Now my wife sits next to me and she asks me to stress this restaurant has clean tables and clean floor. And nice and polite staff. Which all the above are extremely rare in...

This tiny little place tucked into the side of Maxi's in Ferntree Gully precinct is a treasure.

The staff who run the place are friendly and bubbly, making the experience of being in a tiny shop front more than a pleasure. The tea collection, while not massive, has plenty on it and for a great price. The dumplings were hand made (and the impression we received was that they were made to order) fresh and delicious. While slightly on the expensive side (but not massively) for dumplings, it was well worth it to not have to travel closer into the city for fresh, hot and delicious dumplings.

The place has the space for about 12 people at most, and as we went at 6:30pm on a Wednesday night, the place was full with people occasionally waiting 5 -10 minutes for a table to clear.

Keep in mind that they keep the place fairly cool, possibly to compensate for the kitchen out back - so just make sure to take a jumper or jacket with you.

There is plenty of parking due to it being in the shopping centre, or there is the pub carpark across the road if need be.

We will be back in no time! Thanks to the crew there for such a...