Emchai

This place needs a review since the last was two years ago. Considering the dearth of good restaurants in the area and in particular Chinese restaurants, Emchai had got to be the best. It’s not like your standard Chinese there’s a bit more refinery. For starters the crockery is nice, good sized rice bowls with a nice pottery style. The food itself was really really nice, we were a party of 7 eating all different dishes and I had no problem with any of them. I’ll definitely be going back.

This is a surprising find, oasis of great authentic asian food in outer suburbs. The owners are malaysian and generally the star dishes are the malay ones rather than the chinese ones. Try the scallops, the char kway teow, the laksa, the beancurd and aubergine. And the fruit juice (especially apple) is wonderful, crushed/​squeeze to order.

It’s a bit of an odd place this, inside it is a cavernous echoey space totally devoid of any atmosphere and really dark. I can forgive it that though if the food was something to shout about, but honestly it wasn’t. Some things were really quite nice where as others were just a bit bland. The soft shell crab starter was nice but pricey for a run of the mill Chinese restaurant. Wasabi prawns were dreadful, no wasabi taste to speak of just smothered in copious amounts of Helmans. All the way through the meal it was split like this 50% nice 50% meh! Its almost like they had 2 chefs, or 1 with multiple personality disorder and one of his personalities likes bland uninspiring food. If it was cheaper you could forgive Emchai but its trying to price itself as a cut above your everyday Chinese but I’m afraid for me the food doesn’t match these lofty ideals.

Emchai is a spacious Malaysian restaurant with a good choice of dishes all coming well presented. The restaurant itself is quite a typical contemporary asian place with wood flooring and tables, square plates, and soft lighting. There is a counter set up where you can see some of the food preparation going on.
The menu covers the usual singapore noodles, crispy duck, sweet and sour, but also some more unusual dishes including sea bass in champagne, swordfish in peppercorn, and broccoli in ginger. They also offer a selection of noodle soups for cold winter evenings.

This is a nice chinese, though lately it has had some more competition from another chinese on the same street.
I have been here in the late evening and it is busy. Early evening its fairly quiet.
They do the normal range of food with a few of their own unique dishes. I love the spicy prawn crackers.
Service is normally good. Soup is amazing from here.
For birthdays, they do fritters with a sparkler.
The appetizers/​starters from here are quite nice, prawns are of a good quality and flavour.

I haven’t been to this restaurant for a few months, but when I last visited, the portion sizes were fair, and the restaurant staff were very attentive (probably because we were the only customers in the shop!)
The chinese food is good, but the prices are a little on the high side if I remember correctly