Laksa King — Restaurant in Sydney

UPDATE 25/02/25

The King of Laksa has unfortunately fallen from its roost.

I've come back to this place several times in the past couple of years, and things have gone downhill.

I ate here in the morning, when there was only one other customer in the restaurant. Service was standard and unremarkable. Something to keep in mind is that they only allow 30 min seating time during rush hours.

The price has understandably gone up, but I feel that the quality and quantity doesn't match up to competitors. A combination Laksa is going for $22.50, and (I feel quite unreasonably) they added on a $1.50 fee to change to flat rice noodles, to make a total of $24.00. In comparison, Malay Chinese offers Chinese & King Prawn Laksa for $18.50, with free options of changing noodles.

The flavour of the soup is decent (and still lukewarm as mentioned before), but the toppings leave much to be desired. The chicken taste was excellent, but had an overcooked, rubbery texture. There was good variety of toppings, but there was a skewed distribution such that the frozen fish balls dominated the dish. I would've liked more than two prawns in the bowl, however the taste was great.

Overall, Laksa King has gone downhill, in terms of absolute decline in quality, but also in terms of value compared to competitors. It's still riding on its reputation from years ago, and for that, I have to change it's rating from 5 to 3 stars.

For a close by office worker short on time, it may be a quick fix that'd do the job, but for anyone else, I'd recommend making the trek to Malay Chinese at circular quay.

Original review 2019

Well and truly the laksa king of Sydney! I got drawn to this place after multiple great reviews of its laksa (from which it draws its name).

I got the combination laksa, which carried a huge variety of toppings including ample vegetables beef, chicken, pork, fish and fish balls. The broth itself was great quality, and had a superb combination of spice and flavour. The waiting time was around 10 minutes, and the service was warm and friendly.

The only downsides (depending where you're coming from) is the location, which is close to office buildings but far away from the other attractions of Sydney. Furthermore, the level of spice was a little bit much for me despite ordering it as "medium" spice. If kettles chilli chips are a bit too spicy for you, I would recommend ordering low level spice. The other issue was that the soup was a little lukewarm when brought out.

Other than these very minor issues, I was thoroughly impressed with laksa king. It ranks right up there with Malay Chinese in terms of the top...

Update 02/11/2020: Came back to recommend this place to my friend, but sadly the standards has dropped. I ordered a extra spicy chicken laksa ($13) - it was spicy, but not as spicy as previously. My friend ordered one pork chop (entree - $4) and coconut rice ($3.5) but the waitress said they have a main dish of "pork chop and rice" but she could not find it on the menu and then proceeded to order than even though my friend wanted the entree serving. We later discovered they charged us $14.50 for this main dish. The coconut rice was bland, and had bits that was burnt (brown). We complained and asked if we could swap the rice for normal boiled rice instead, but the manager came out and said "This is how we do our coconut rice - our customers do not want such a strong flavour so if you don't like it then I will just cancel the order" - which came across as a little extreme but since they weren't willing to just replace the rice, my friend did went ahead and cancelled the order. My friend asked for a cup of hot water instead of the usual cold water. At no point did the waitress let us know that it would be extra charges for the hot water but we later found out when paying that they charged us 50c extra, after asking for the itemised receipt.

I previously liked this place enough to recommend it, but after today's experience I will think twice before going back. I'm not sure if I will be doing any more recommendations for this place given the level of service and attitude we received.

Original Post (19/08/2019): Delicious Laksa and friendly service.

I went in for lunch and ordered their signature chicken laksa ($13). The waitress asked how spicy I like it? Mild, medium or spicy? I said I want it spicy with extra samba.

The Laksa came out nice and fast. It was full of flavours, the spices was amazing! I added the extra samba and it enhances the flavours even further. I can taste that it was a very authentic recipe. There is only one other place comes to mind where the Laksa even comes close.

Only disappointment was being charged an extra $2 for the extra samba, but the manager explain that if I order it as "extra spicy" then I would get the extra serving samba for free inside the soup. A great tip I'll be using on my next visit.

I highly recommend visiting this restaurant. The food is delicious and the staff are quite friendly. If you are planning to dine in for lunch, go before noon otherwise you will be waiting in a long line that goes right...

Maybe COVID pandemic has had an impact, but extremely disappointed with the food quality, quantity and choice of ingredients. My seafood laksa had 1 prawn, a few fishballs, fish cake, not sure if any squid in a small bowl, with mostly rice vermicelli and a few strands of hokkien mee. All this for $17. The Hainnan Chicken Rice was half a breast with mild chicken flavoured rice and a soup that tasted more of pepper than chicken. This was $17 too. Nasi Lemak - Beef Rendang was very sweet, plain rice not coconut rice, 1 small slice of cucumber and ikan bilis sambal was sweet. My wife could not finish it and we ordered Har Mee as well. The Har Mee soup was thin flavoured and there was a few strands of Hokkien Mee and mostly Rice Vermicelli. I asked waitress why Har Mee had no Mee, she said rudely that is Mee as though I was stupid. I said that was Mein not Mee... She said sharply "That's how we do it" The boss came over and said we were complaining about the Har Mee...which looked nothing like photo btw. I said that this is not Mee, he admitted it was expensive so they mixed noodles. He offered to make a new one, but I had enough of the lies and rudeness by this stage.

Never coming back again. Even papparich tastes nicer and has better quality...