The Panda Yum Cha — Restaurant in Sydney

Went there for dinner one Thursday night, it was absolutely the worst dining experience by far. The place was big, but It was dinner time and the place was nearly empty, there was only just 2 to 3 tables occupied. Goes to show how bad this place really is. We should have left right there, but we didn't, biggest mistake.

First off, the staff were cold and disinterested at best, the manager had absolutely no idea to make us feel welcomed and want to stay. The food quality was utterly atrocious.

We ordered scallop vegetable dumplings according to the menu, there is no bloody scallops in the dumplings, they replaced them with a couple of measly frozen prawns without telling us.

We ordered seafood and tofu hot stew, absolutely rubbish, costed $32, but the quality you get was much much worse than the same dish in a street side Cantonese restaurant that costs half as much. The ingredients were not one bit fresh, they had the taste and texture of the frozen food all over.

We ordered bitter melon with salted eggs. It's essentially bloody deep fried bitter melon rings. Nothing on the menu said it was deep fried! We have been actively trying to avoid anything deep fried lately. As soon as we saw the dish, we asked if we could send this back, the manager looked at us as if we were from the Mars and replied with a resounding heartless "No". i mean, come on, has he not seen any restaurant tv shows at all? Customers have the right to send the untouched food back all the time (lets hope that Gordon Ramsay doesn't come to this restaurant)! How much does a single dish cost to the restaurant anyway comparing to the rent and staff salary? This manager has not worked in the restaurant business for long and does not have his priorities right. He just saved a single dish that probably costed the restaurant $5 in exchange of a happy returning customer, well done! We sucked it up and tried the dish, it was absolutely tasteless. There was no salted eggs, only layers and layers of deep fried flour. We didn't end up touching the dish at all.

We ordered steamed chicken in lotus leaf as one of the restaurant recommendation. The dish costed $29 and It was the most disgusting food i have ever tasted in the very long time. The chicken were soaked in the overwhelming flavour of soy sauce. And the meat itself, oh, what a bloody mess, you can't find a single piece of decent chicken meat in this, it was a bunch of chicken bones, chicken fat and skin, with some measly meat in between. It's almost like they only used leftover chicken meat from other dishes, all the good/decent parts of chicken (breasts, drumsticks,wings) were nowhere to be seen. It was absolutely disgusting and incredulous, it's not bloody lobster, it's just chicken, why did they have to cheap out on bloody chicken meat.

Rest assured we left feeling hungry, disgusted, and scammed. Worst dining experience by far. I wouldn't be surprised that this atrocious abomination of a place folds in a couple of weeks.

Stay away from this disgusting place...

We've given this Yum Cha restaurant two tries, when it first opened and the second time just yesterday. The first visit we were severely disappointed with the waiting times for food, with our order taking almost two hours to fulfill even though it was the second half of the lunch hours (12.50pm-2.50pm). As people were already leaving, we were just shocked at how long the last dish took to come out (ordered around 7, 5 arrived pretty fast but 2 were missing for a long time). Prices were steep considering the generally small servings. Several other Yum Cha restaurants perform better in this regard.

We only gave it a second chance because some of their dishes had that authentic taste, and the restaurant overall had a unique and inspired decor whilst remaining clean. This time around they had more staff on hand, and ordering wasn't only limited to pen and paper like last time. Prices and serving size still seem lacking; the only standout dish was the three colour pan fried cakes (with the yellow sweet one being especially tasty).

The strangest thing, after having been to countless Yum Cha restaurants through Australia and Hong Kong, is that Panda Yum Cha doesn't have Iron Buddha (tik goon yum) tea? How hard is it to have several standard tea leaves in stock? On that note, they use tea bags instead of tea leaves unlike other restaurants, which means the more you refill water, the faster it loses its flavour. It's worsened by the fact that their tea pots are much smaller than the average ones.

As they are the only Yum Cha restaurant in Macquarie Centre, they have no competition and are uncontested hence the long queues. I would only consider Panda as a last resort, with all its shortcomings and the fact other restaurants have done better, but they have the potential to be great, and they seem to be...

A Disappointing Experience Introduction We arrived on a Saturday around 1pm.Our experience unfortunately fell very short of hopes. Atmosphere and Ambience The restaurant was busy, and we were given a table straight away although we had not booked. It was somewhat noisy but no more than other restaurants. The chairs are very low, which made it hard to sit down and get up, especially if you have a disability. Service The service was good. Staff were polite but seemed uninterested at times, we found the food trolleys serviced the larger tables as against the smaller two person tables and often missed out on food selection or we had to ask for it. Food Presentation Taste and Quality This is what let the place down the most for us, the first trolley offered to us was desert. The fried spring rolls and the pork rolls were dry lukewarm to cold and bland, most of the food on the trolleys was dumplings and not what we wanted. We ordered calamari which took twenty minutes to come out, the mango cream crapes had one small piece of mango and mostly cream. Drinks The Chinese tea was ok. Ordered a lemonade drink which came out in can with a straw. Value for Money Very expensive, just for two people our bill was over $100.00.The meal did not match the cost and the lack of quality food made this meal poor value overall. Conclusion This restaurant did not capture the spirit of quality dining. Disappointing food, and below-average overall. The place was not the cleanest, the bathroom was dirty, the floor in the bathroom was unclean, there was visible mould on the tiles at the sink. We left wishing we had chosen a different restaurant. Not recommended for those seeking a satisfying...