Temasek Parramatta — Restaurant in Sydney

The food and customer service used to be good in the old address. However, we were very disappointed today after ordering the Hainanese Chicken Rice and the pork spring rolls. The Hainanese chicken was no longer delicious, very plain (both the rice and chicken), and the price surged to $23! Not to mention the pork spring rolls which had no taste at all if I did not dip them into the sauce provided. Totally overpriced and not worth it.

And the customer service was a joke. I entered the restaurant as soon as it opened, and ordered takeaway and waited right in front of the counter. The food was ready probably 10-15min after I ordered and got sent to the counter. However, the lady at the counter who talked to me and put my name down for the order did not check the food at all. I waited for 20min and thought that it made no sense to wait for that long, so I approached the lady to ask. She, again, did not check the food at all, but the order slips, and turned back to me saying that my food was probably got delayed by the spring rolls. Although it did not make sense to me still, I trusted her for what she was doing. I waited for another 10min (30min all together), I really got frustrated, so I leaned towards the counter and saw my takeaway order sitting at the back of the counter together with a few more takeaway bags which came after mine!

I caught a waitress attention saying that my order was just right there. The waitress waved her hands, asking me to wait, and continued going into the kitchen with no jobs in her hands. Excuse me??? Is this how you treat a customer who has been waiting for 30min?

I was decent enough to not go to the back of the counter myself to get the food. But what does customer service mean to the staffs? It was not even busy dinner time, and some staffs were available standing there to wait to serve new comers. However, for the whole 30min, no one came to check on me or asked me if I needed help while I was literally sitting near the counter. After I took over the food, no apology at all! Wow, just wow....

Been hearing about the Temasek Restaurant in Paramatta Sydney. Last night, Friday, we finally visited it for dinner. Didn't make any reservations though, and had to queue for 20mins.

The place was filled to the brim when we arrived at 8pm, but it was a rather big restaurant . Crowd had a good mix of Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians and Caucasians patrons.

Service was not too bad considering it was very crowded.

For simplicity and quick fix for our hunger, we ordered the Hainanese half chicken rice. It came with the chicken rice chilli and black sauce but we had to order our own rice 🤷‍♂️

Taste was quite good, quite near to the authentic Singapore one. Except the chilli (which is a very impt factor for a great chicken rice) was too sweet. But probably ideal for the Aussies...🤷‍♂️ The soup was great tasting while the rice was a sure winner. Great fragrance and texture.

On the whole, they did well with this chicken rice dish. With that alone, we were too full to order anythg else. But I'd love to try their other dishes like the infamous laksa, their fried rice, etc.

Price wise, I didn't think they will qualify for the inexpensive asian food category on sydney. In fact, they are quite expensive if you ask me. But still, it was packed with customers!

We went back the nx day to try their laksa n hor fun, made reservations this time. It was spot on!

The 'wok hei' for the hor fun was up to mark. Delicious n flavourful! But costly, at $30 bucks.

Laksa was great too. Fragrance was perfect, gravy was tasty and thin rice noodles was prefect. Both dishes were big enough portions to share amongst 3 people

If I come back to Sydney, I'll definitely visit...

Having been going to the previous location for 20+yrs, we were kinda excited to try out the new location. I’ll be honest, it was a let down in many ways. Food is dearer than the previous location (incl the lunch specials) & the quality/service was lacking.

The roti was our go to go to entree but when we ordered that we were told sorry we have run out of roti (really at 6pm on a Saturday night?) the same applied when we ordered the satay chicken, sorry no satay chicken. And again we got a sorry no satay chicken skewers when we tried to order that for entree (to replace our go too entree roti)

Some of the food was not up to their usual standard despite the steep price increases (char, beans, pepper chicken). Outside of the laksa and spring rolls, it was average tbh (char & beans) And it was soo hot !! It was a hot day anyway but there’s no air con, only portable coolers to blow cool air around the whole restaurant. It made for a very uncomfortable experience.

The kicker for me though was at the end I noticed the kitchen was serving up roti so I clarified with the waiter about how when we ordered roti we were told they had run out of it. No roti left sorry. If that was the case why have you got roti there ready to serve. I was told yes that’s pre ordered. So in short we were lied too. They hadn’t run out of roti, apparently it’s a thing you need to pre order (which mind you even if you did know that isn’t easy to do when it’s so hard to actually get through midweek to make a booking.

In short, yeah I’ll go back for their signature dish the Hainanese chicken rice but only when they...