So when we arrived, the very stylish dressed and coiffured host was playing the boring old Sydney hospitality game, of ‘I hold the power attitude’ so completely ignored us for five minutes despite us being the only people waiting in front of her. I thought that rubbish had died years ago but sadly not. We were seated and the space is really nice although when you head to the bathrooms you can see it is starting to show the signs of wear and tear. It is crazy busy so you can understand why. The service on the floor was warm and friendly and pretty efficient on the whole. There were a couple of things that did let the service down a bit. One the waiter spilt my cocktail down the side of the glass and egg white foam all over the stem and base. He acknowledged he did it by instead of sitting out out just put it on the table so we had sticky drink on the table after that. The other was one of the waiters put our dish on another table and walked away. The people at the table realized, then told her and she then brought it to us after working out her mistake. Maybe I’m picky but she had no idea it they had sneezed on it, touched the food etc.

The cocktails were brilliant, but the food was the biggest disappointment. And some dishes were sold out. We wanted the crunchy pork belly, and I know it said on the menu they have limited supply but to be sold out when you are at the beginning of the second sitting is not great. If you like this I guess you need to be in the first sitting.

The steamed dumplings were great and we thought we were in for a great treat with the rest of the food. Sadly it wasn’t to be. Then the duck pancakes came, which were missing a pancake. We only had seven in the steamer and not eight (but hey accidents happen and they would be hard to count) but the duck was so bland and dry. It looked great and the skin had good crunch, but it had none of the splendid taste and succulent mouthfeel you expect from Chinese duck. It was so disappointing.

The pork knuckle in sweet and sour sauce was interesting and done as a pressed meat. It was fairly tasty on the whole. But the sauce was gluggy and a very one-dimensional in flavour profile.

The crab fried rice was overdone with the typhoon shelter crumb topping and overwhelmed the crab flavour. All I could seem to taste was the topping because they had put on way too much, and if I hadn’t ordered crab I wouldn’t know it was there.

Sadly I have to say Mr Wong didn’t live up to the expectation from the ‘hype’ or the experience you’d expect from a Merivale venue, and honestly for the price I would expect food that was better executed. If you want good Cantonese food from a Merivale venue, go to Queen Chow in Newtown. I think the Mr Wong crew need to head to their sister restaurant and see how it’s done. Or better still, for similar price on a menu they should send someone to Me Wah in Hobart to see what a similar price delivers in execution. We won’t be rushing back!