Hong Kong Chef Kotara — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

I have dined here quite a few times and its always been satisfactory. However, my visit for this evening has fallen well short of that benchmark. Understanding that it was a busy night, as soon as we walked in, we were confronted by the most angry and unhelpful lady manager its been my unfortunate experience to interact with. Apparently she is fairly new and she really hit the atmosphere like a wet blanket. We were shown to our tables at 7:20pm whereby we perused the menu's and made our selections. This is where problem number one arose. It took 25 minutes for us to be noticed and then for our orders to be taken. Given the waiter serving us was harried he at least was pleasant and looked urgent. Our order included drinks as well- very simple- 2 cans of lemonade and a can of coke. The order was written down on small bits of paper and we did not recieve a receipt on the table with the order like every other table. After sitting there for a further 40 minutes the same waiter asked us if we had ordered drinks and we repeated them to him whereby he then came back hurriedly and plonked 3 cans down with 3 glasses that were still soaking wet from being washed up. There was no offer of a glass with ice at all. We had already noticed a couple behind us who sat down after us receive their meal and yet we had not even recieved our entrees. The final straw as we were approaching the 1 hour and 10 minute mark in the restaurant was when the couple at the table next to us received their large plate of Fried Rice. This couple had been there for no more than 20 minutes. Feeling frustration rising , we quitely rose and left our table to exit the restaurant. No one saw us, no one questioned us, no apology was forthcoming. I feel that our order had not even made it to the kitchen and the lack of service and focus on us as patrons was extremely disappointing. I must say that this is the first time in my life that I have ever felt compelled to vote with my feet and leave a restaurant. I understand that things happen but the whole experience was utterly demoralising and frustrating. Would I recommend this place to eat? The food is usually great but they certainly need to reveiw their service practices and they do need to have a manager who is easy going and a good reflection on the business. The lady who is in this position currently is an absolute nightmare. Would I go back? Hard to say given this experience. If I do, it will not be for some time so they can review their customer service and make the necessary changes to ensure their customer base is felt welcome and valued. I predict that if they do not change quickly, then they will not be in business for overly long. And that...

Nightmare Manager!

I have been a regular and loyal customer to this restaurant for many years now, and boy oh boy am I extremely disappointed from my last couple of visits.

Management has changed over the last couple of months, and I have noticed all the staff have slowly changed over too. The new manager Jin has been completely insulting and belittling to both me and other restaurant patrons on all of my recent visits. Jin has changed the way the restaurant runs, as now she charges for plain hot water! ($1/pp) as well as dipping sauce. Jin has rudely lectured my family and I how “nothing is free” and that if we don’t have enough money to pay for these additional items we cannot eat here. I found this comment very rude and uncalled for. The menus have mislabelled prices, presenting cheaper than the “actual” cost price, Jin refused to honour the menu prices. The picture menu advertises a mango dessert which is actually not available to order at all, which I find very misleading.

I have noticed that the wonderful chef Theresa no longer works at the restaurant, and this is reflected in the quality of the main dishes. I will note that the Yum cha menu is still exceptional as Darren the head of yum cha is still present. Darren puts in lots of effort and takes pride in his craft.

Furthermore, the new staff are incompetent and undertrained. The same staff member forgot to send our order to the kitchen on NUMEROUS occasions, leaving us waiting for over 30 minutes for food in an almost empty restaurant. The new staff are also not well presented compared to the lovely girls who used to work here, and wear non-cohesive graphic clothing. The restaurant presentation has also gone severely downhill, as tables are not set neatly and have excessive amounts of sticky tape smothering paper table numbers. The storefront looks tacky and unprofessional, I would compare it to a fish and chip takeaway with the amount of hand written signs and twine holding menus on windows (see attached pictures). This factor really tops off the negative experience that hong kong chef has become.

As long as this manager Jin is in charge, I will not be coming back to this restaurant. If the owners knew what was good for their business, they would terminate...

Hong Kong Chef has quickly become one of our favourite restaurants at Kotara. Generally speaking, the food is served quickly, and it is delicious. There are a lot of vegetarian options on the menu as well - including a dedicated vegetarian section, which I appreciate. We enjoy the atmosphere and the food, however, there are a few things I'd note:

Food is usually quicker when it is busy than when it is quiet. Food rarely all comes at the same time. This restaurant is based around sharing the food, so with that context, it wouldn't matter that the food doesn't all arrive at once. If you are eating your own meal though, it can sometimes take 5-10 minutes between one dish arriving and another which is a bit awkward. Plan to share (if you can). The menu does not denote what is gluten free. Not a big deal, but with multiiple people who have coeliac disease in our family, it would make ordering easier. Don't expect a menu item to come out the same twice. I've had the same dish and seen it come out ini a variety of different ways. The core ingredients are usually consistent, but other things vary. Eg, I had a noodle dish that had bok choy in it and was garnished with lots of spring onion one day and another day it had no bok choy and just had spring onions mixed through instead. One day it was very moist and didn't appear to have much soy sauce. Another day it had a lot of soy sauce and was not very moist. Both times were still delicious, but it really does make the menu a bit of a guessing game. You can see in the photos, I've attached these two noodle dishes that are 'the same'. The servings are pretty huge and the menu is well-priced for the size of the meal. Most dishes do not come with steamed rice. It is served as an optional side. I like this approach. This comes back to food coming out at different times. Don't expect your food to come out before people who ordered after you arrived. It seems to come out as it is ready and so food that is ready quicker will come out before things that...