Spur of the moment Yum Cha in Parramatta – we chose Prince Restaurant on Church St.

When we got there, we were promptly escorted to our table. And that’s probably where the decent service ended LOL. Our first encounter with bad service occurred with us getting tea. They completely neglected to ask us if we wanted, and what type of tea we wanted. When we desperately looked around for a waiter (and was duely ignored), we finally got a non-waiter to pass the message (of what tea we wanted) onto a waiter. She umm… took ages. So long in fact, that we managed to get another waiter to get us the tea. And yes… eventually, we ended up getting two (of the same teas).

Food-wise was a bit better. There was the short spare ribs in plum sauce. This is my partner’s favourite dish. And admittedly, it really wasn’t bad. The meat was tender and the taste, not overpowering.

We also ordered chicken feet in black bean sauce. These were like any other – not bad.

Then my favourite – Siu Mai (prawn and pork dumplings). These were slightly disappointing. They weren’t as good as siu mai’s from other yum cha places. They also had a slight wierd taste to it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on…

The beef tripe, on the other hand, was very very much yummy. Very oily though. But taste before health … right? (ish?)

Now here’s a new invention. It’s like a combination seafood steam dumpling. There were baby clams/pippies and other wierd tiny seafoody marinara mix encased in an oversteamed, super-thick, somewhat gooey white outer layered skin topped with umm… caviar type substance that didn’t really taste like anything. I was not a fan of this wierd tasting and wierd looking thing…

We also had a lou mai gai (lotus leaf rice). Inside the lotus leaf is a glutinous rice ball with egg yolk, dried scallop, mushroom, chicken, shrimp and chinese sausage. This appeared very much quite fresh and my partner loved every bit of it.

And lastly, we ordered egg tarts fresh from the oven. Because they were freshly taken out of the oven, these are probably one of the best egg tarts we have ever eaten. Everything about this egg tart just seemed right. The flaky puff pastry, the crumbly type (my partner’s fav) was suprisingly light, crispy and fresh. The middle eggy bit was also nice and hot. Because eating this was such an enjoyable experience, my partner decided to order three more plates (takeawayed… and no, we didn’t eat them LOL).

Egg tarts

So… the egg tarts (takeaway) were delivered by a nice friendly kitchen hand “ah sum”, after which, we were again met with bad service. We wanted the bill. AND we had asked for it… AND waited for it… for like half an hour… They had started to corden off bits of the room with room separater thingis and we were basically claustrophobicised into a tiny cordened-off bit of the restaurant. The waiters also saw us in the room and rudely asked us if we’d gotton the bill yet… Then we waited some more. When the lady FINALLY came with our bill we placed money on their plate and expected her to take the money away, only to be met by her somewhat rude comment that we ought to take it to the counter ourselves… er… ok?

Anyway… crap service aside, the food was pretty good. The price was also very much quite good. For so many dishes (including 3 takeaways), the final bill was $50.30. Not bad at all.

Ratings:
Food – 8/10
Service – 5/10
Ambiance – 7/10
Value for money – 8/10
Overall – 28/40

Prince Restaurant
100 Church street,
Parramatta
NSW 2150
Tel: (02) 9891 5888