Jin Yan Asian Cuisine — Restaurant in Sydney

I'm a regular to this place. It's 5 mins away from my home and I'm a member at Castle Hill RSL. I first came to this place almost 4 years ago, and ever since then things has just gone down, and down. Yesterday was my breaking point. I will no longer recommend this place to anyone who doesn't read or speak Chinese. My family normally would have brunch here, mainly their yum cha. The waiters are exceptional, but not many of them speak English, hence it's difficult to explain to them what you want, or to even understand when they try to explain something. After covid-19 restrictions, the restaurant re-opened and no longer cart the yum-cha trolley. Instead, you have to select what you want to eat by ticking the dish name on a piece of paper. There are no pictures. Because we're regulars, we know what we're ordering. The managers of the place are always rude. It's as if they don't want you to be there. You immediately feel that you're not welcomed. Yesterday, the manager got our order wrong, and he insisted that's what we ordered. Nevertheless we knew what we ordered and instead of apologising, the manager treated us as if we made the mistake and he is doing us a favour. This could have been easily avoided if the restaurant gives order confirmation to its customers in English. The manager could have spent 2 mins verifying the things we selected on the paper they gave us. None of this was done. The manager gave us a chit with a bunch of Chinese characters written on it and there is no way for us to verify that he got our order correctly. Next, meal portions. It has dwindled and our mango pancake has dropped half the size. Again, the desert order was taken by another manager who spoke to us as if we were bothering him. Finally, the price. When you pay, you will not know what you've paid for. There is no way for them to itemise your bill and it's always bundled up in a single category (like S, M, XL). So you don't know whether you're overcharged for something that you didn't order. It happened to us once last year when they forgot our order, and we asked our waiter to cancel it as we had to leave. But it was still charged in our bill. We found out after we asked them to break it down for us at the counter (yes, we had to hold up the line). The cashier realised the mistake and did not even apologise. She gave us back our refund using coins (as if throwing the money to a beggar) although we paid by card. So if you're the type who looks at your bill and wonder what you were charged for, you'd be left disappointed. I think after years of rude treatment by the restaurant managers, it's time for me to stop my support and encourage my neighbours and friends to do the same, simply because everyone who walks in there deserve to be treated with respect. It's a shame because the food is good, but you don't feel good when you dine. Bad service, getting only worse. It's difficult to justify why I should still support them when there are better yum cha...

I've been here 3 times, twice for yum cha in the afternoon and most recently for dinner a couple of nights ago with family. I would've given 1 star based on our dinner experience but their yum cha was pretty good so I gave them an extra star. I hardly give bad reviews but dinner was terrible. We had a booking for 6.30pm for 10 people which was fine we got there and were seated pretty quickly. We ordered 6 dishes pretty much 5min after we sat down. The restaurant was half full at this time. Then the wait began. Strangely enough the fish came first. The other tables began to fill up around us. After the first dish there was nothing. For a WHOLE HOUR! We had a four year old and a one year old with us who were getting restless. We asked staff to follow up on our orders as we saw that the tables who came after us were getting their food faster than us. The first male staff we asked was rude, gave a stock standard answer and pretty much brushed us off. We then asked a female wait staff who went to one of the managers to chase it up. This resulted in ONE more dish being pushed out of the kitchen. By this time we were like, if we cooked ourselves we would've finished cooking dinner and been happily eating by now! We waited for another 10-15mins for the next dish to come out. We even asked the female staff if one of their cooks called in sick or something, to explain why the food was coming out so slow to which she replied no, maybe there's lots of takeaway orders which the kitchen have to deliver on time coz the drivers can't wait! The rest of our three dishes came in the next 20mins. All up we're waiting ~2hrs for all our dishes to come out. The food actually tasted ok but the wait was not worth it. The parents of the two young kids had to scoff down their food so they could take the kids home to sleep. The kitchen needs better time management. This is not a degustation, waiting for 2hrs for all the food to come out is unacceptable especially for a...

Decent experience, however marred by subpar quality of food.

We went for yum cha on a Sunday morning. The restaurant is located within the RSL complex and had ample parking just before 11am. The check in process in addition to the standard COVID safe precautions were a bit tedious, however understandable. We were seated immediately. The tables were adequately distanced from others, and the seats were reasonably comfortable.

The food ordering is almost entirely from a menu, as opposed to on trolleys. Staff were quick and efficient, and the food came rapidly within 5 minutes. The taste was quite average, but disappointingly they mostly came out only lukewarm - almost room temperature. This was surprising, and was the biggest downside of the entire meal. I suspect they either understeamed all the dishes, or they prepared it well in advance for the morning rush, and left it at room temperature to minimise waiting time. In either possibility, it was well under the expected quality. Despite taking almost 45 minutes to arrive, the congee was lukewarm only, and lacked any appreciable flavour other than saltiness. Again, quite disappointing. The pricing is quite typical for yum cha.

I'm not entirely sure why my experience is an outlier to the other reviewers here, but at this point I would not recommend this place due to the subpar quality of the food. Cantonese cuisine prizes freshness and eating dishes whilst they're still hot, and today's experience was contrary to that....