Light Years - Newcastle — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

We dined on a Tuesday night for our 7 year anniversary. The venue has wow factor - high ceilings, indoor plants (some of them real plants, many fake), and the impressive video of a Hayao Miyazaki film playing on loop. The place had a buzz, and had good looking, well dressed patrons to add to the nice vibe. So those were the good parts. Then the food. We ordered the pickle plate, which we found novel and tasty. The mud crab dumplings was the main reason why we came here as it seems like a novel food. The sauce it came with was very unique and tasty. The mud crab dumpling was ok. Next on our order was the duck pancake. Turns out it was a pretty mediocre rendition of Peking duck, served with hoisin sauce that tasted like it came out straight from a jar. 'Is that it?' was my initial thought. The other dish we had was the fish curry. The fish was barramundi. Initially it was tasty, but the barramundi fillet was riddled with bones!!!. This is a major failure of fish preparation and is unacceptable. In My fiance' couldn't eat it as she has an aversion to fish bones. I kept eating it because it was fairly tasty, but in hindsight, we should have sent it back. No fish fillet from a restaurant should have bones like that! We had ordered the papaya salad, but they had seemingly forgotten that order. We cancelled it and ordered the mushroom dumplings instead. It came out 15mins later. We'd hoped the mushroom dumpling would be something special, but alas, it was merely ok. We finished off with the sago dessert, which was quite nice. Total spent was $150ish. Quite pricey. But it was the after taste - on our drive home, both of us felt very thirsty. The sort of thirstiness that I've felt after eating from a Chinese restaurant that has MSG in their food. My fiance' gets headaches from MSG, and she had a headache, and a swelling feeling in her throat. This literally left a bad taste for both of us. I don't have conclusive proof that the food has MSG in it. Be warned if you are sensitive to MSG, please check with the waitstaff if the food contains MSG. Finally, we rated the service on par with perhaps a fast food restaurant. The waitstaff seemed aloof, somewhat disinterested, and not particularly warm nor personable. It did irk us that, despite having put in our booking that it was our 7th anniversary, no mention was made of that, no acknowledgement. So that also made the experience very 'meh'. Overall. Won't be returning here unfortunately. Perhaps the experience is better if you order drinks - we didn't as we're...

Lightyears is a great place for a date, but as soon as come here with a large group, their banquet experiences are very disappointing

After being here before I can say it’s a reasonably priced dining experience for Newcastle since they’re all share plates, i.e. ordering the Wagyu (54), pork belly bao (32) and the fire cracker chicken (26) between 2 people (more than enough food, some of their best, and all meat dishes) comes to a total of $54 per head. So why is the “chefs selection” $69 per person for less food? Whenever a dish came out, it was a ratio of 1 dish per 3 people, or 1-4 (the bao buns), there’s no additional sides, there isn’t just a bowl of potatoes or veggies that people can just help themselves to. Even when we got to the mains of the papaya salad and curry, there was still only a small portion for each person (4 bowls of rice, 2 curries, a handful of the salad each), I’m really not sure what I’m paying for, just vegetables for meat prices I guess?

And to finish off the evening, you even don’t get your own dessert, they’re also share plates

It doesn’t make sense that I can come here on my own accord, with 2-4 people, and have a better, cheaper, experience and not leave hungry?

I can’t say the staff were amazing either for an event, the whole booking took around 2.5 hours and I had assumed it ended multiple times before it did, not sure if the wait time between meals was their regular, wait staff kept coming around asking for drinks multiples and specifically only asking that, you could literally ask anything else like “how is everything going” or “are you excited for the next dish”, it just feels a dishonest if you’re only trying to upsell a large table, and at the end, it felt like we were getting rushed out for close

It’s still a decent venue (for Newcastle as it doesn’t really have any competition in the same cuisine, and having a date night here is fine), but I won’t ever do a event here again after...

A great date night spot in New castle. It was a great experience but I feel like there could be some improvements. We ordered: Watermelon and Pineapple mocktails: they were SOOOO refreshing. No notes! The coconut kingfish ceviche was a great starter with balancing textures The mud crab/ prawn dumplings were honestly disappointing. $22 for over-steamed dumplings that tasted like a worser version of traditional Hargrow. Served with a sweat vinegar instead of a more sour one was also a miss. The dill served no elevation to flavours and is very separately. Review the dumpling flavour profile, the time needed to steam them and their price. Pork belly bao was not just the highlight of the dinner, but my day. This is a MUST order. The eggplant was interesting, personally adding the lime changes the whole thing. Just because it’s an oily dish doesn’t mean it needs acidity. It also seems to be a Chinese dish but tastes Vietnamese? Not a critique just was shocked. The price for a stir fried eggplant dish is also a bit steep. The presentation and ingredients shouldn’t amount to that tag The chicken seems to be Taiwanese influenced but served with a Vietnamese sauce. I don’t mind that but I did mind the sauce presentation, the chicken itself is bland and needs the sauce, but the sauce is scattered everywhere and can easily coat the chicken. For aesthetics it looks nice but I would’ve liked more sauce. The pricing for only 7 pieces of small chicken was also a little steep. Overall, it was an enjoyable experience and I would recommend, but it did fall short in some aspects. I also thought it was funny that an Asian food resturant has a Mediterranean decor...