Liu Rose Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Stepping into the restaurant, you feel like you've been transported back to the 70s/80. It has the typical tacky Chinese restaurant decor, red carpets, yellow/gold wallpapers which they have preserved very well. Chinese restaurants with these decors are getting rarer as new Chinese restaurants tend to go with the modern touch. No doubt there's a sense of nostalgia dining here, bringing you back to childhood memories of going to a Chinese restaurant with the family.

We came here to celebrate early Mother's Day and started the feast with the tea smoked duck which was full of favour. The duck was tender and the smoky flavour of tea was infused throughout the duck. Highly recommend! Next was the lobster cooked with ginger and shallots layered with noodles. Lobster was fresh and cooked perfectly, the meat was bouncy and chewy and complemented well with the noodles. The noodles were not your typical egg noodle, still egg noodles but more like ramen noodles, soft but still bouncy and not mushy. Again, highly recommend. Next was a prawn roll on top of fried crispy vegetable. Not sure what the vegetable is but it's usually found as a base for fried dishes. These fried crispy vegetables are a bit salty and sweet the complements the prawn roll well. It also is great with rice, similar to furikake. Again, recommend. We then had the Empress Eggplant which was a nice dish with rice. Lastly we had a lotus root dish was sliced and sandwiched between a seafood tofu mix. This was quite interesting and have not had it before. To end the meal, we had Baked Alaska. Again, this brings back nostalgia as I don't know where else in Sydney you can get Baked Alaska. What better way to bring all the cliche and nostalgia of going to a 70s/80s Chinese Restaurant with Baked Alaska and some fortune cookies? Amazing food, nostalgic atmosphere, service is very attentive and a great night to celebrate Mother's Day. Can not...

I wanted to love this place so much, but alas..

There seems to be 3 unwritten rules about this place, one is no walk-ins even if they're half empty, no same day booking, and lastly is you have to order wine if you want attentive service and timely food like non-Asian patrons.

We did the first 2 mistake and ended up booking for the week after.. now the expectation is set. TBH I took notice of this place because of the Tarantino/Wong Kar Wai vibes, we expected the food to be Australian Chinese remnants of the 70s so we are not fooling ourself. Conscious that there are way more 'region specific' authentic restaurants in Sydney now than there are Aussie Chinese joints so we hope this is a prime example.

The day came and wow what a disappointment.. Not a single food we ordered were even decent, their signature Golden Dream cocktail was the only saving grace. The service starts by taking down drinks order and pushing wine like their selling used car in the 70s, we went for cocktails and jasmine tea later. We had our entree, and then it was 1 hour extra wait for the rest of the food, while tables behind us came and go. Every other table ordered wine, maybe that's why? After checking with the visibly annoyed waiter 2 times, the food came 57 minutes after the entree... they scooped bits of rice from our bucket quickly and left... and wow, the rice is dry, the food is... yeanaah.

I want to love this place so much.. the dining room is beautiful and so full of character, is this really the ultimate in (Aussie) Chinese food as they claimed? I had American chinese food in the US where I put a huge benefit of the doubt and really got blown away, this.. this...

A Rose by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet. Lovers of kitsch and yesteryear look no further than Liu Rose. While places like the Lucky Prawn in Marrickville or Good Luck Lounge in Bridge St, Sydney CBD try to capture the essence of the 1980s suburban Chinese restaurant, the Liu Rose is the genuine article and is unashamedly so. Everything from the fish tanks, gold trimmings, glittering wall panels, thick lush patterned carpet, and bow tie waiters scream a bygone era where life was simpler, Aussie-Cantonese cuisine was exotic fare, dad had mutton-chops and wore knee high socks, and grandpa could choose from the western meal section in the back of the menu for his steak and chips. You know what I mean. Liu Rose still serves up the classics like sizzling beef on hot plate, sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken, mapo tofu, salt and paper squid or pork ribs, the list and choice is endless. Not just that, they still do niche classics like crocodile (yes crocodile) in Xo sauce and deep fried quail (a must). Of course there’s also high end classics like lobster in ginger-shallot sauce and steamed whole fish (all market price of course). There’s just too much to choose from. Prices are extremely reasonable but probably because servings are smallish. But it’s a minor concession as you drink it all in from the rich gaudy atmosphere, cacophony of happy diners, and delicious Chinese-Australian...