Hong Kong Chef East Maitland — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

Went for lunch at Hong Kong Chef on Sunday 22/06/25 with my mum.

We ordered drinks and shortly after, someone came to take our food order. Unfortunately, the person taking our order seemed distracted, he started punching items into the system before I’d even finished speaking. When he read back the order, he spoke so quickly and with heavily broken English that we couldn’t properly understand him, even after asking him to repeat it.

The food came out quickly, but one of the dishes was incorrect. I ordered pork ribs in black bean sauce, but what came out was deep-fried pork ribs in a sweet, sticky soy sauce instead. We didn’t send it back because we only noticed once we’d already started eating.

We also ordered a seafood noodle with wontons, which was disappointing, bland and lacking any real flavour. I wouldn’t order it again. The special fried rice was on the wet side, mostly egg, and could’ve used more vegetables and meat, though the taste wasn’t bad.

Portions were huge, definitely too much for one person. We had to ask for takeaway containers, which cost 30c each but were too small to fit a full dish. Sadly, we ended up leaving some food behind.

Advice to future customers:

Double-check your order is correct

Order less than you think you need

Bring your own containers if you don’t want to pay extra for small ones

To the management: Please consider reducing portion sizes or clearly advising customers that the dishes are meant for sharing. Also, ensuring your staff takes and repeats orders accurately would go a long way in improving the experience.

I visited a few years ago and had a much better impression. Unfortunately, this time around, I left feeling a...

We found this restaurant about 3 years ago. We love Asian food as myself being an Asian. This restaurant has a nice atmosphere and we tried it out and it was great. Quality was great and taste was great. It was very satisfying. And since then we have visited this restaurant regularly.

However, we went there about 6-7 months ago and the taste was very different and we didn't like it. Something must have changed. But about 2 weeks ago, we decided to give another try. The same dishes we always tried... BBQ chicken and BBQ pork with rice and combination Laksa.

They were the worst we have ever tried anywhere. We were so hungry but we literally couldn't finish them. Leaving food is not our thing. But we had to because the food was shocking.

BBQ pork was dry as socks without any shine juicy skins and some strange sauce which is not pleasant at all.

The worst bit was my Laksa. The soup was absolutely tasteless and it wasn't thick consistent soup rather blob. It was so 'disgusting', I wouldn't serve this to anyone.

Then I complained and the staff kindly took away, what was returned was the dish boul absolutely full of the blob juice. I am sure of it, the chief got offended by my request and then just dumped more in the dish.

This is very unfortunate because we used to love this restaurant but I don't know what happened about 6 -7 months ago. The owner might have changed or the chief might have changed.

I wish I had photos of the dishes to share with you but we forgot to take.

There is no way we will ever go back to...

Price goes up, quality goes down. Usual story.

Had the pan fried scallops today. Somehow they managed to make them chewy, stringy, watery and greasy all at the same time. No seasoning and lemon sauce that was as sweet as honey and no salt to balance it out. Inedible. Pretty sure they were defrosted in a microwave way too fast and then cooked too fast at too low of a temperature.

Also had the scallop and prawn steamed dumplings. Had steamed dumplings many times and they are usually nice but these had the texture of paste glue and also weren’t seasoned. Inedible.

Partner had chicken with cashew nut which was served as a soup!(not meant to be a soup). Sauce was flavourless water and the chicken was 100% boiled. Flavourless.

Service was, well, what service? Others that came in after us got served before us. No one bothered to come ask how everything was. When it came to paying(I shouldn’t have), the waitress didn’t ask how our meal was, or anything that you would usually expect. Only wanted us to tap our card and be gone. I feel like I’ve been robbed, jokes on me I guess. I’ve made a charitable donation that I can’t claim on tax!

Needless to say, we won’t be going back. Ever. It’s a shame because Hong Kong chef at greenhills used to be a regular for us but they, like many other restaurants in the area have gone so far downhill since covid that they are beyond repair. You would think that to attract more business and get the customers back, you would put in extra effort and make sure that people want...