Duk Inn Newtown — Restaurant in Sydney

TL:DR - great food, great service - 5 stars.

This is a great restaurant for groups - there's an upstairs area that can work as a private room for a group of, say 20-25 people - the food looks and tastes great and the service was excellent too - our waiters were Lachie and Jason and they were exemplary - very friendly and efficient. So people will definitely leave feeling good about life!

As for the nitty-gritty - I tried to order a bit of everything - from the entrees, I had the fried chicken wings, xo steamed scallops and the Taiwanese plum pork. Everything was fantastic, can't go wrong with chicken wings, 1 scallop for $7 on its own seems expensive but I still wanted to try it - it's good (like everything else) - but it's definitely an entree because a scallop is small (even if it arrives in a big shell! But that adds to the excitement of it arriving - just think of it as an optional extra if you want to treat yourself to something a little different!). My favourite was the Taiwanese plum pork - light, crispy, and a little sweet - I could eat them anytime!

As for Mains - I ordered the crab (with ginger and shallots) , the peking duck (which came with the duck fried rice) and the Buddha's birds nest (vegetables) - the crab was traditional and came mostly pre-cracked and came with noodles - if you like traditional Chinese-style crab, that was it! I would have preferred to try their spicy version, but someone in our group couldn't handle any spice, so we had to go boring! (Boring still tastes good!)

Peking duck is... Peking duck! Pancake with shallots, cucumber and plum sauce (I think it's plum - if not, it's something sweet). Not much to say - it was good... If you like Peking duck, you'll like it here as well.

The Buddha's nest was a little different, as the best was made up from potato chips? At least that's what it seemed like - i prefer that over the edible foam stuff or noodle nest. As for the vegetables, they were stir fried with a sauce sitting inside the nest. It was good enough - having some vegetables just made the dinner feel healthy!

And we also had dessert. We had both their offerings - the tofu pudding and deep fried ice-cream. The tofu pudding was the stuff you can get at yum cha - but it was much higher quality. I don't normally like it, but I tried it and it was super silky and the right amount of sweetness in the syrup. The fried ice-cream was super! It was Pandan flavoured ice-cream covered in a nice coconut flavoured batter - it was such a great combination - just treat yourself and get it! It's totally worth it!

Final thoughts - don't buy the duck fried rice by itself - you'll be disappointed! It's fine when it comes free with the peking duck - but it's not fine if you order it as a standalone dish - it's not salty enough as a standalone. It needs the other flavourful foods to accompany it and you have the rice to offset the flavours.

All in all, it's totally worth it as a great night out!...

The photos attached below are to compare what the same dish (char siu) looked like a year apart:

My husband and I came here a year ago after hearing good reviews about it. The food was juicy, fresh and flavourful. The ambience was fun and relaxed and the service was really good.

We decided to come back a year later for his birthday with his family. There were 5 of us and we were hoping the same experience and food quality as last time but we ended up leaving disappointed.

The ambience is the same, the decor and atmosphere is really comfortable and relaxed, but the music was way too loud and felt chaotic when trying to order with the waitress since it was hard to hear and communicate.

We ordered scallops, half a peking duck, char siu, wasabi beef and singaporean style whole barramundi with noodles.

The scallops were the best part of the whole meal but I wouldn’t highly rate it. It was $7 per piece and was very small.

Half a peking duck was okay, it wasn’t as juicy as last time, and the duck fried race came with some parts of it cold and hot and was quite bland. And we had to order more pancakes. (You could get the same dish for better and cheaper elsewhere)

We then got the char siu, which was basically bathing in oil, wasn’t as crispy as last time and looked very different from what we got a year ago (photos). It wasn’t as flavourful, mostly just oily and slightly sweet, it just didn’t taste like char siu at all. And was also very soggy.

We then got the singaporean style full barramundi with noodles: same thing for the fish, mostly bland but the sauce was too sickly sweet, very sugary and not enjoyable at all. And the noodles that came with it were again, bland, not much salt but tasted strongly of curry and did not taste good in general.

The last was the wasabi beef, it wasn’t bad it wasn’t good, it’s literally what it is, wasabi beef, it was tender but not as flavourful as the black pepper beef which is probably a better option.

Overall the place is overrated now, too expensive for the quality of food, and isn’t enjoyable to have a meal there when you can barely hear each other or...

We were a group of 13 celebrating two of our friends' birthdays. While the food was decent, it wasn't exceptional—likely due to the fact that it was served so quickly, which resulted in several dishes getting cold before we could enjoy them. That being said, we appreciated the BYO option for just $15 per corkage. The staff was friendly enough, and overall, the experience was fine. We could have easily gone home satisfied and maybe even recommended it to family and friends looking to try something new.

However, the biggest shock came when we received the bill. To our surprise, we were charged $87 for soy sauce and fresh chilies. We had asked for fresh chilies a couple of times because the ones provided tasted more like capsicums, but we never expected to be charged for them—or for soy sauce—at all. Soy sauce is a basic condiment, and it should be freely available at each table. While we understand that your menu lists a charge for soy sauce ($3), the idea of charging per person for these basic items is completely unreasonable. Additionally, we were never informed of this "per person" charge when we placed our order, nor was it clearly communicated at any point until we received the bill.

What made matters worse was the response to our Google review. You can read the response by sorting reviews by the lowest ratings (Google only shows the top reviews first). As loyal supporters of Asian businesses, we were truly disappointed by how our feedback was handled. Instead of acknowledging our concerns, the response was dismissive and unprofessional, telling us not to return because we were "having fun." This response, especially considering we were upstairs with only one other table, left a very negative impression.

We had high hopes for this restaurant, but unfortunately, the experience and the way our feedback was handled really dampened...