Mr Wong, Sydney lunch.

It seems a pity to have a blog and not use it so I thought I'd try and remember to add to it more frequently.  Like when we have an amazing meal.

Yesterday we decided to have lunch at Mr Wong, modern Cantonese food in a moody fit out in what was once the Tank nightclub (http://merivale.com.au/mrwong).  Moody is of course code for dark.

I didn't realise until I was googling for the URL that the restaurant (part of the Merivale group) has two hats.  This means the SMH reviewers rate it as 16 or 17/20, (16 being "Great; worth seeking out" with 17 "Excellent; one of the best").  Either way, it was very good but we did have a few criticisms.

Moody and dark, the BBQ Pork Chueng Fun

The food of course is the most important aspect of any restaurant review! The lunch menu includes a page of dim sum and our first choices were beer for Matt and sparkling wine for me along with Lobster and scallop dumpling ($15 for three pieces, although every time the plate was three our waitress offered to make it one of four so it was easier to share) and BBQ pork rice roll ($13).  I think the steamed dishes were the highlight.  The skin was incredibly thin and  yet still strong enough to easily pick up with your chopsticks and not fall apart en route to your mouth!  The flavours and textures of these two dishes were just sensational!

Scallop and Lobster parcels of yum

Tastebuds tempted we ordered a few more dishes (and a glass of rose wine each).  Staying with the yum cha, it seemed time to order some fried  dishes.  Wagyu and truffle puff (three for $15) and Aromatic duck spring roll (three for $12) were nice but we both thought they were under-seasoned, the duck especially so.  I couldn't get over the delicate pastry on the puffs, so fine and thin and flaky, pity the poor apprentice who had to roll it out!

Underseasoned duck spring rolls and Wagyu and truffle puffs

With the fried food I had to go back to a dish I missed on the  steamed course, my very favourite yum cha dish, har gow gee ($11 for three).  Only what we actually got was Chive and roast duck dumpling (also $11 etc).  We eventually flagged a staff member down and questioned what we'd received (it not looking like a prawn dish) and the maitre de (in dinner jacket and bow tie) came to speak to us about the mix up.  The duck was removed and the prawns soon appeared.  Needless to say we ate the duck dumpling which was in Matt's bowl. :-)  What can I say, the steamed dishes were SO much better than the fried ones.

The wrong duck.  I'd order this next time though!

Not quite replete we were advised that the kitchen would soon be closing so ordered one final dish, the one Matt orders every time he sees it, tartare.  This one was Spicy angus beef tartare, radish, Sichuan chilli oil, and black sesame cracker ($21).  To be honest, I usually find tartare just a bit too much raw meat but this I loved.  Quite spicy and really tasty.  Matt didn't love it and he's the tartare fan - so maybe it's not one for the purist.

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I wish they offered the crackers to take away but I also loved the tartare.

 On the negative side we didn't like the credit card surcharge automatically being on our bill with no "cash or card" being asked.  There were loads of staff on the floor but we got asked the same questions over and over.  The wrong dish is easy to write down I'm sure, but in a restaurant of this caliber somewhat surprising.  And clearly I need to take my actual camera with its flash in future rather than relying on my rather ordinary phone camera - if this is the lighting at lunchtime you might need to bring a torch at night!

My favourite dumpling everywhere. Har gau gee.

	All up a crazy lunch - six dishes, one beer, one sparkly and two glasses of wine each - was around $160 and we were there about two hours.  Food was superb, service swung between attentive and ignored (one wrong dish and Matt had to ask for his chopped chilli when our first dishes came out).  The ambience was great although a little too dark.