Dong Ji BBQ Noodle House — Restaurant in Maungakiekie-Tāmaki

This is second visit & first review. We dined inside. Great service & really tasty food. The portions are really great value. The restaurant was not full but the sound of the clanging wok never stopped. Customers were coming in and out to pick up takeaways.

We had:

Sweet & Sour Chicken . It was so crispy & good! Perfect meat to sauce ratio.

Beef & Black Bean: This came out on sizzling plate. Again, it was not drowned in sauce, but had the perfect amount! The meat ratio was high. This one was so delicious 😊

Singapore Noodles. Cooked to perfection. The noodles were perfectly stir-fried and still had a beautiful springy texture. Some chefs make these noodles to wet and they become sloppy. Here they are perfectly dry, but still moist.

Fried Egg Rice: Very yummy! The best part, it was not oily. Moist places seem to Fry their rice in to much oil. Here, they don't. It makes the rice fluffier and gives a better wok hei. Uncle Roger should come and taste this egg fried rice. He would give it a 10/10

Overall: The chef here really understands the skills of making good quality food with nig punchy flavours. The "wok hei" was on point! Perfect balance of meat, sauce and vegetables. But more important to me, is that the food was not oily. Chefs who use to much oil ruin the flavour of the wok. You just don't get the smokey, caramelization using to much oil. The chef here has great attention to detail and you can here this when they are cooking. Nice high flames and plenty of tossing! So far my favourite Chinese in Mt...

The food:

$12 BBQ pork on rice - pork was so so. Some pieces far too sweet, most were bland. Bok choy served was small and tasteless. The rice - not very fragrant and whatever little sauce they splashed on top was flavourless.

$18 Duck and rice - very salty. Luckily water and tea is free! Skin was good. Barely any meat. Far too much bone. Same bok choy and rice as above so not very fragrant, tasteless, flavourless.

$6.00 Spring Rolls (normally $9.90) deep fried too long. Burnt. Flavourless. The same kind you get from the supermarket where it’s $8.99 for a box of cocktail sized spring rolls. Served with tomato sauce? Why? On top of flavourless shreds of raw cabbage and carrot? Avoid.

Atmosphere and decor:

Dated. Old. Tables far too big for just two people dining in. Very warm inside. Music played on the tv is a random YouTube video of pop songs - some with explicit lyrics

Service:

Average. Not very friendly or inviting but this is the norm with similar restaurants.

Overall:

Very disappointed in lunch here. Will not return. Suggest others avoid and spend money elsewhere at other nearby...

Well....we got moved twice and our table got given to someone else. so we ended up sitting with two lots of strangers in the duration of our meal.. that was alright. The duck was very tasty we enjoyed that part of the meal. Although I would NOT recommend the mixed vegetables as it cost us like $14 for some bok choy and broccoli and undercooked raw celery pieces and it was not overly exciting unfortunately. Also we ordered soya chicken which after 10mins of ordering they then told us they had ran out, which was very disappointing, then we opted to try their chicken fried rice, which ended up being terribly bland and overpriced for what came out. Unfortunately not the best experience, we were left quite dissapointed. (We have been here several...