Best Gourmet Restaurant Newtown — Restaurant in Sydney

Are their reviews fake? From food to service, everything was awful. My partner and I arrived at 6pm to a restaurant with no guests. Their doors were open but their sign was still flipped to “closed”. I walked in and asked if they were open. There were two chefs in the front window making dumplings and one older female server. None of them verbally responded but gestured for us to sit down. I expected to be given a menu and water but after waiting for more than an appropriate amount of time and seeing the one server busy chatting away with the chef, I had to get a menu on my own from another table. The server never asked if we had questions or were ready to order so I tried to give a friendly wave to get her attention. I saw she made eye contact with me but continued to finish her conversation with the chef before reluctantly coming over. Seeing that the chefs were making fresh dumplings in the window, I was excited to try their pan fried dumplings but was told that those, along with mantous, would not be available that day. I ended up ordering the sizzling duck and the soup dumplings, thinking they’d be safe choices. She asked if we were ordering fried rice and I tried asking if our entrees would come with white rice but she did not understand my question and made it clear she was annoyed with me by her facial expression and tone of voice. She flipped to the fried rice page of the menu and gestured for us to choose. I answered my own question when I saw a $3 option for white rice and pointed to order it. Unlike the sizzling plate images in their reviews, my sizzling duck came out wrapped in aluminum foil plopped on top of the sizzling plate. There was nothing sizzling about it. It was overly salty and boney. For $27, I expected more than a 1/4 portion of a duck. The rice came a few moments later. You’d think white rice is just white rice but this white rice had burnt brown bits mixed in. Clearly, it was old rice mixed with a new batch. The soup dumplings that I thought would be a safe choice tasted far from fresh. The dumpling skin was too thick as well. Even the frozen ones I buy from the grocery store taste better. I had such a bad ordering experience already that I was truly afraid to speak up about these issues. I just wanted to hurry and get out of there. At the end, we were never given table water. The duck dish was so salty that I got so thirsty. No one ever came to check up on us after our food came either so I just went up to the register to pay as soon as I was done. We never want to go back...

Just felt funny to read the misleading reply from the restaurant:

If we were DINE and DASH, we would’ve first finished the expensive dishes then say hey the last cheap dish got problem, then we refuse to pay, that makes more sense right? How dare two young and petite girls finished all the food then say no pay while there are so many guys in the restaurant eating😂

If we are DINE and DASH, and like you said we have “finished everything”, why don’t we just run out of the restaurant but go talked to you we were literally the most outside table😂 What’s actually true is the pancake served first and we literally let them know it tastes not fresh when they just dropped other dishes, we not even starting the two main dishes.

If we are DINE and DASH, why would we bother to post on these platforms and report issues to council to expose ourselves?

We can never imagine how can a human being twist the truth in this way, like we are not even mad now we just felt it’s too funny lol how can a human even talk like this. 诚实是中华民族的传统美德你们真是小时候没学过吗😂 We actually have photos and videos to prove what we said. How about you also prove yourself by your restaurant cam?

We were who initiated the communication and all we requested is can we refund just the pancake, but they falsely painted us DINE and DASH😂 They grab our pancake to other table and showed racist to us and still asked us to pay, how can we not try to argue? We were actually going to call police when the man came out from the kitchen trying to to beat us😂

In conclusion, we are not dine and dash. Check out your real reviews(not the bought ones), ppl got to hospitalised, how rude and racist you were, so clear, no more justification needed.

Last, we are not uni students anymore, we are well educated and proud of Sydney uni, and now living a happy life with stable jobs. Sorry for any false accuses to Sydney Uni lol.

Last response to this...

This location has had a lot of good reviews previously however, I am not sure why.

First off, when we walked into the restaurant we were avoided for 10 minutes before we were finally seated. Then we were giving menus by this guy and he gave us like 2 minutes to read it and returned to collect our order.

We told him we weren’t ready and he “eye-rolls” and leaves to talk to some couple next to us, like we were disturbing his “social hour”. Anyway he comes back and we try to order a couple things to which he says “Not available” rudely.

My question is can you not let us prior to handing us the menu? Clearly he did not care and we ordered a couple things. We also said, “that’s all for now and if we want more, we might order later”

He says “No, that’s not how it works - it’s now or never”. It wasn’t even peak hour, there was like 4 people there. He served our food coldly. I would be more accepting towards ego and arrogance if the food was actually good, which it unfortunately was not - so I failed to see why so much arrogance was exhibited.

We eventually paid and left. Unfortunately some friends visited this place again and got treated much worse with the man refusing to serve them some items but happy to serve to others. It gave me the impression they are racist, selective but hey not homophobic so that’s refreshing lol. Let’s also not forget the chef curses and asks people to “Get out”

Final Thoughts: If you’re enjoying your evening and would like to hold on to your dignity, just go some where else. There is a lot of places with mediocre food and good service. As a person who has worked in service industry, I know how hard it can be however the treatment left me and my friends upset and saw no reason for it. Just go...