Lazy Susan's Chinese Restaurant Darwin — Restaurant in Northern Territory

After a beautiful sunset wetland cruise to the Corroboree Billabong, we cancelled our fine dining booking, opted for a quick and easy meal and ended up in Lazy Susan's based on the great reviews here, especially the previous few four and five stars reviews with high praises.

Lazy Susan's is a pleasant and delightful restaurant that serves mostly Chinese food, I was surprised to see quite a few Thai dishes on the menu. It is better than most Aussie suburban Chinese but calling this outstanding, the best or awarding it five stars is just OTT! It shows how limited your experience have been with really good Chinese food and I hope you would explore a little more.

Lazy Susan's was very busy on a Saturday night but luckily we just missed the busiest hour, most diners were leaving and we got a table quickly.

The waiters were very busy but friendly when we can catch their attentions.

Although the restaurant has high ceiling, the noise level was extremely high and overbearing with very long floor to ceiling glass windows down one side and the shop front. Although there were thick red velvet curtains but they were opened for decorative purposes rather than for noise absorption. Luckily the noise died down as some big groups left and it was pleasantly quiet.

The Peking Duck Pancakes came out quickly and it was a decent dish. The pancakes were slightly dry but the four piece of duck were flavoursome and juicy. The cucumber and shallots for the pancake were slightly dry too probably being left out in the kitchen for too long. The pink pickled cabbage was a let down, it was tasteless. Not a good example of Chinese pickles with good balance sweet and tangy taste that should tickles the taste buds and appetising.

The Spicy Salt Squid is also decent. The coating were nice and crunchy, light and not oily. Although the squids were not of the highest quality but they tasted fresh. Flavour wise it was slightly bland and underwhelmed as they don't have the sweet squid taste I was looking for. Most of the flavour were from the spicy salt batter. It's hard to do a good one of this dish as many good restaurants failed to do so. Lazy Susan's take is however better than many ordinary Chinese restaurants.

The Szechuan Scallops with Broccoli were better than I expected. The scallops were plumb, juicy and fresh. The broccoli perfectly steamed and still enticingly green and crunchy. The sauce was light.

The big let down was the Kangkung with Garlic, Soy and Chilli. A simple dish that usually wows if all else failed but it was bland, under seasoned and tasteless. Slightly overlooked and tough. The Kangkung also looked dry with little sauce.

Servings were big in Lazy Susan's and I like that all the dishes were not greasy. So we did not feel bloated after the meal and felt like we had a healthy meal.

We are not big on cocktails but the Kung Fu Panda themed Kung Fu Cocktails looked interesting if you are up for it, every other diners around us have ordered a cocktail. The bottle Stefano Lubiano Primavera Pinot Noir from Tasmania went down too easily. It was a reasonable restaurant price of $66. We would have to pay $36 and corkage for two if this were BYO.

Lazy Susan's was a pleasant experience and it was just what we wanted after a long trip. We might come again if we visit Darwin again and feel like a Chinese meal. But we won't hurry back and certainly not a must.

Peking Duck Pancakes 7/10 Spicy Salt Squid 6/10 Szechuan Scallops and Broccoli 7/10 Kangkung with Garlic...

I recently visited this restaurant to celebrate a birthday, and , it turned out to be a very disappointing experience. Food was average; most importantly the poor customer service and unprofessional attitude of the manager ensured I will never return to this restaurant.

Don’t ever come to this restaurant if you want to celebrate birthday; we had brought along a birthday cake and asked the staff to keep it in the fridge so we could cut it after dining. Initially, there was no issue with this request. However, after our meal, the restaurant manager made it unnecessarily difficult just brought the cake; didn’t provide plates and cutlery which is just basic courtesy; gave us unwelcoming attitude then and throughout the dining. We ended up not cutting the cake in that venue. If the restaurant had a policy against outside cakes, this should have been communicated upfront, and we could have chosen a different venue. What was meant to be a happy celebration turned into a frustrating experience due to the rude treatment we received.

Now, recalling the comment passed by the manager before we were even seated. Asked are you guys of this ethnicity? We said “No we aren’t”. With all those unwelcoming service and treatment from him; I can summed up he asked us for not to be treated well.

This kind of behavior is unacceptable, especially in the hospitality industry. It’s disheartening that what should have been a special occasion was ruined by...

I went in for yum cha with my partner, we're long time fans of the yum cha experience and wanted to see what Darwin has to offer. It's definitely not the same!

When we first arrived it was a bit confusing, we waited to be seated when we entered then we're directed to go to the back of the restaurant where the till was to check in (which was the same line as everyone trying to pay and leave) and wait for a table to open, then we're shown our table back at the front? A bit odd but ok.

Being a restaurant they do not offer trolley service, and the menu was limiting and did not offer some of the staples of yum cha. Check the menu before you go to make sure you get the dishes you're after. Also no mango desserts (no mango pancakes, or mango pudding with condensed milk, or mango tapioca, not even jelly), which is strange up here where Mango's are coming out of our ears! The food we ordered was ok, I've definitely had better but I've also had worse. The siu mai was a bit hard on the top and not steamed properly but the rest of the dumplings and buns were fine. If anything I found it to be a bit bland and required lots of soy sauce.

If you're in Darwin for a while and just really need to scratch that yum cha itch, this'll do the trick. I'm hoping I caught them on an off day, but they are also expensive so I can't say I'll be back soon...