Taste of Shunde 順德味道 Eastwood — Restaurant in Sydney

In Eastwood, redubbed ‘Koreatown’ thanks to a NSW Government grant to the Korean Community Chambers in the City of Ryde, it now feels rebellious to eat Cantonese. We’ve been coming to this suburb for handmade tofu, Chinese meat pies (xian bing), and char siu pork, and to graze across Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean cuisines, for much longer than it’s been labelled a Korean precinct. We are also familiar with Taste of Shunde, having tried the district’s famous milk-focused offerings and crisp-skinned roast goose at their larger Hurstville restaurant.

You’ll find the Eastwood branch in the busy Jusco shopping centre. Enter through the green grocer selling a colourful collection of Chinese Fuji apples, cherries, and dragon egg lychees. Walk past the tiny tofu seller and the man making hand-stretched noodles to find it at the end of the arcade. Most diners in the full restaurant are eating dim sum. We join them with Shunde-style rice dumplings filled with roast pork, prawn and shallots ($9.90) that have tasty interiors but thicker, slightly claggy skins. With lobster dumplings ($15.80) and steamed radish cake ($9.90) both proving unavailable, we only ate one dish from the yum cha menu.

Steaming, particularly fish, is a common booking method in Shunde, and it’s usually done with minimal flavouring to preserve the natural flavour of the food. We try steamed bamboo prawns ($39.80) enjoy how simple and tender they are. The prawns are separated by slices of bitter melon on a bed of vermicelli flavoured with garlic, which are tasty but hard to extract cleanly from the bamboo boat. Pressure cooked and steamed pork belly rib ($42.80)—dry rather than saucy—with eschallots, garlic cloves and juicy red and green capsicum rounded out our lunch. We ordered rice to eat it with but it...

A restaurant focused on Southern Chinese cuisine. We booked for 10 people and we ordered 6 dishes : XO sauce pipis with handmade rice noodles Pan fried green chillies stuffed with dace fish mince Dice wagyu beef with garlic Salt and pepper squid Sunde roasted goose (Whole) Steamed fish cooked in 3 styles coral trout

But actually we came for the 星班三味鱼 seafood platter ($318 with medium size coral trout) - it's a beautiful platter of seafood steamed on a giant lotus leaf: there's a live coral trout filleted and steamed 3 ways (green peppercorn, Chinese olive, red chilli), alongside some prawns and pipis. Under the seafood is a layer of silky 陈村粉 Chencun rice noodles. It was pretty good - the fish was 爽 firm, bouncy, flaky, fresh-tasting. The prawns were OK - large but not very 鲜. The rice noodles aren't as full of sweet, fragrant seafood essence as you'd expect - I think because coral trout doesn't have much by way of juices, and these particular prawns for some reason weren't very juicy either. Still tasty though. This portion was perfect for 10 people with 5 other dishes.

The 蒜香和牛粒 wagyu beef cubes with garlic, capsicum, mushrooms was delicious - tender, juicy beef stir-fried in a moreish sweet and salty sauce. Lovely and colourful too. Pricey though at $63.80.

Roasted goose is Crispy and more lean than duck. Highly recommend this dish.

Pipis were nice and came with wide flat rice noodles but I prefer vermicelli noodles because if you don’t eat it quickly, the noodles get swollen and just stick together.

Service is good and friendly. The place is compact because is a holiday and people are coming to enjoy dinner with family...

During our Chinese New Year celebration at this restaurant, an unfortunate incident occurred. As we were concluding our meal, the staff informed us that they had mistakenly served a lobster that was 1kg heavier than what we ordered. We were neither informed of the lobster's weight beforehand nor given the opportunity to see it prior to serving. Despite this, the restaurant insisted we pay for their error, which we reluctantly agreed to, to avoid creating a scene on New Year's Eve. However, when we questioned the fairness of being charged for their mistake, the restaurant owner became extremely aggressive and began to curse at us. In response to the escalating situation, my cousin began filming for our safety, but the owner aggressively snatched the phone from her. Kitchen staff then confronted us as we repeatedly requested the return of the phone, which was initially refused. Amidst this, the owner threatened to call the police on us for allegedly committing a crime, though we had already decided to contact the authorities ourselves.

We eventually retrieved the phone, but with young children in our company and the late hour, we chose not to linger. The experience was shockingly poor, marked by unprofessional service, hostility, and blame placed on customers for the restaurant's oversight, culminating in an assault.

We later filed a formal report with the police and lodged complaints with both Fair Trading and the ACCC. It's clear that a business operating with such disregard for customer service and legal compliance has no place in the hospitality industry.

forgot to mention the place was stink like a rotten rat

Shutdown is...