Fook Yuen Seafood Restaurant

This place has changed.
Lots of mainland staff. Just don’t do the job as well as Cantonese staff.
We had to go back and forth with the wine order abt 4 times before they had stock of what we choose
Food was average at best
Lobster was the highlight which was nice and fresh and crunchy

This is our family chinese restaurant.
My chinese wife and her parents love it, especially with other places we tried in Chatswood.
It is authentic enough and often I am the only Caucasian in there which tells me, it must be popular with those who know.
Service is like every other chinese restaurant rude and short, you always feel as a customer you are asking for a Hughe favour when you order food.
We love it for their dim sum and also in the evening when we celebrate birthdays and their like. Price is pretty average, so if you don’t order some lobster, there won’t be a bad surprise.

About three years ago, Fook Yuen was my favourite yum cha place. I liked it so much I would drive 25 minutes from where I lived on on weekends despite the notorious traffic in Chatswood. Unfortunately, my recent two visits in 2014 were absolute disasters — the restaurant was half empty, some of the classic yum cha food had already run out before 1:30pm, and there were only a handful of the dim sum carts rolling around for the whole restaurant…

Very nice restaurant to enjoy a Yum Cha with friends. A good variety of dishes (although I’m still not a fan of chickens feet) and friendly staff. Attractive Chinese style décor and fairly quiet even though the restaurant was full when I visited for Chinese New Year lunch.

The food came in large platters in this suburban Sydney chinese restaurant. We were there after a wedding. We ordered the banquet and the food came in huge platters. I had 3 servings of Sang choy pau. Courtesy of the generous servings which others could not finish. If you ever need to feed an army of hungry truck drivers come here. One of our guest was a volvo truck driver and even with our combined effort we found it hard to finish the plentiful supply of food. They were very kind and allowed us to doggy bag everything from the 3 tables of wedding guest. This was not the wedding reception just supper to end the lunchtime wedding reception. We also had fried chicken topped with deep fried rice. This is a new twist for me to fried chicken. Nice crunch but the rice can be oily in some parts. I wish I was in Sydney long enough to try their yum char. If the servings are as big it would be great.

Went in a group of 8 on a Monday night. Service was average, not friendly but also not rude. Food was nothing to rave about, filled with bones, certainly not anything I’d recommend to friends.
I would rather eat at the Bavarian Bier Café up the street if I was hungry for a restaurant meal in Chatswood.

Anyone familiar with Chatswood would know there’s only two yum cha restaurants: Kam Fook Seafood Restaurant and Fook Yuen Seafood Restaurant. These are the old guard, the joints that stood the test of time that were erected before Chatswood became a hip place to be.
Having never tried Fook Yuen, we opted for their yum cha and arrived at 12.40. For the uninitiated, timing is crucial: come too early, and there’s no variety, come too late and there’s only cold leftovers. Pro-​tip: Do yourself a favour and aim for 11.30−12.30, any later and you do run the risk of having old rejected dishes. We knew we’re slightly off the optimal period, but when we were greeted with a queue, this seemed to time-​bend that rule.
«Number 78!» — our ticket to yum cha paradise… or so we thought. What follows is an example of bad service within an industry known for bad service. As is customary in yum cha restaurants we are asked what tea we would like. We asked for chrysanthemum tea, our waitress looked confused; so I expressed it in Cantonese, she ignored that one. Rather than get someone else, she gave us black tea instead rendering her question moot.
While we were fortunate enough to be seated in what can only be called the Tornado Alley of the yum cha restaurant, the trolleys that passed by were surprisingly lacking in their offering. Having to wait more than 10 minutes to get a trolley that has Siu Mai () is ridiculous no matter how you spin it. That dish is a staple in yum cha restaurants and should be on every second trolley. This is akin to going to your McDonalds and being informed that your Big Mac will take more than 10 minutes to make. Ridiculous! So, was the wait worth it? Sadly, no. Although the Siu Mai was quite good in that it was plump, meaty and downright tasty, it wasn’t worth the wait. I can go to Kam Fook and get a comparable taste but a lot quicker (while I still had an appetite).
Soon after, the congee trolley rolled by, offering nothing but some kind of offal stew in congee. My partner was looking forward to trying their Congee with Century Egg (a fairly common congee at yum cha) but no such congee visited us.
Next up was Har Cheung () which also didn’t disappoint in the taste department. My partner being the Har Cheung aficionado that she is, proclaims that it is the best she’s ever had and it’s not hard to see why. The rice noodle wrapping was soft and moist, soaking in the puddle of soy sauce it’s been doused with. This paves the way to the prized prawn inside that tasted fresh and juicy. Delicious!
Herein lies the catch though: we had to wait for it. The first time the rice noodle trolley strolled by, it didn’t have the prawn variety. Five minutes later, it was just another pass with the same rolls. Another five minutes passed and we were sitting there hoping they restocked the trolley with Har Cheung, which thankfully, they did. All up, it was a hell of a wait, frustrating if you’re a local, unbearable for a visitor!
Our final dish that we tried here was the Peking Duck pancakes. Traditionally, this dish was never offered on the yum cha menu. For good reason too, because more often than not the duck meat goes from lukewarm to downright cold by the time it reaches you. We made an exception that day because everything on offer was lackluster. The duck meat itself was sliced very thickly, while not overly oily, had a good amount of sauce to offset its gamey taste but… I’ve had better.
The sad thing about Fook Yuen is that, you can see traces of its former glory. It wasn’t always this way: that’s why reviews peg it close to Kam Fook (because they were written eons ago). But while Kam Fook aged well like Meryl Streep, Fook Yuen seemed to gone way passed the expiry date like Goldie Hawn. In desperation, it seems the restaurant overprices its dishes ($ 7-​$ 10 per basket/​plate) to commemorate their past, much like Donald Trump has that ridiculous comb over to remind himself of better times. All I can impart on you dear reader is that you should rule this out as a yum cha option. They have simply forgotten the meaning of it.
~ Jambon Cochon

Fook Yuen is known colloquially by my Celtic friends as «yer mates»
This is as standard as it gets. No surprises, no disappointments, no parking — well there are two spots or so but I think they reserve them for Senior Peoples Party Officials, or Eddie Obeid.
Great place to play stainmaster with the lazy suzy — my nephew and GHB took out the Family honours last time, superb spin left a bowl of soy teetering on the edge for a full second before it fell into his sister’s plate.
There may be great special dishes reserved for Cantonese regulars — how would a Gweilo like me know? That pi… upsets me anyway, why can’t I try some of the good stuff — if its there?
Maybe they think we don’t know about customs and manners and how cultured guests should behave at a restaurant — hey — nice prawn flick* GHB! got it in the fish tank.
If they modernise their attitude and the menu (and clean up that mess) it’ll go better.
* To make a prawn flick — place two chopsticks on the little ceramic stand, wider ends closer to the fulcrum. Put prawn on the other (narrower) ends, form a fist and hit wider ends to launch prawn into the air. Extra points if it then hits ceiling fan. Avoid eye contact with casualties, unless its Eddie.
This review will taste better with a pinch of salt
Update October 2015 — This place has gone downhill. Its really a two star joint these days, but I don’t do twos.

Good, authentic dim sum and a nice family banquet style dinner place as well. It’s a nice dining area with the push carts and a good variety of dumplings and expected dim sum fare. Ate there for dim sum during a work lunch and was very satisfied, perfect for sharing with a larger group. However, word around work is that a few people had a case of food poisoning here and I went there with caution. Ultimately, I couldn’t stay away because of the convenience and good food. Regarding price, it’s standard for Sydney dim sum — roughly $ 20 each for a very filling lunch.

Perfectly average, decent dim sum in a very clean and well-​appointed dining room (for a Chinese restaurant). Clientele appeared to be mostly Cantonese, always a good sign for a dim sum restaurant. Service was reasonably fast and efficient, although obviously slanted towards favoured, frequent customers. This location is near a major suburban train station amidst offices.
While I wasn’t able to compare the quality or the prices here against those at dim sum houses in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia, the prices did seem steep for this visiting American. If I remember correctly, a small dish was running at around A$ 3.80, a medium around A$ 4.50-$ 5.00, and a large around A$ 6.00. The total cost ran to about A$ 30/​person in my party.
I know the Aussie dollar has appreciated substantially against the greenback — so you guys should be the ones traveling to the US and spending money here, not the other way around ;) — but when converted into US dollars, that’s at least 50% higher than what you’d expect to pay for similar dim sum in the US.
Therefore, I honestly don’t know if that’s standard dim sum pricing for the Sydney area. Given the overall price/​quality value proposition compared to dim sum I’ve had in the U.S., Canada, mainland China, and Hong Kong, I’d give Fook Yuen a decent, «passing» 3 stars.