Have seen quite a few posts lately about a new Chinese BBQ place in Robertson, next to Kengu Ramen. Not being particularly inspired to go anywhere else for date night, we went to check it out for a mid week dinner.
The place was surprisingly packed for a weekday, but there were still a few tables leftover. Might be prudent to book before going on a weekend.
The menu comprised of the usual suspects at a Chinese BBQ with a few notable non skewer items missing from the menu. Anyway we ordered via the QR code on the table.
Lamb and beef arrived first. There wasnt too much meat on the skewers, but the flavours were definitely intense enough for my liking. Between the two of them, again I prefer the lamb. I don't think I've been to a Chinese BBQ where the beef has been as good as the lamb.
We also had some black pepper beef and grilled pork belly. The pork belly skewer was mixed with garlic cloves. It wasn't on the menu but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The pepper beef also had considerable amounts of capsicum as well for extra flavour.
Our final skewer was the mushroom. One serve came with three skewers, each with a thinly sliced fraction of a mushroom, making it quite bad value for what it was. Again I did like the addictive cumin taste though.
This was a serve of chilled cucumber. It was covered with a generous amount of garlic. Interestingly the cucumber was skinned, and even more interesting was the lack of sauce to go with the dish. It was however cooling and went well with our meat selection.
Next was the egg and prawn fried rice, translated somehow to soy sauce fried rice. Other than egg, it was firmly lacking in reasonable amounts of prawns or soy sauce. However, more egregious was the fact that the rice was definitely not leftover and entirely too mushy. It clumped together like wet sand and is probably the worst fried rice I have had.
Redeeming the meal somewhat was the enoki mushrooms. It was served in a buttery spicy sauce with a relatively generous amount of enoki mushrooms that went well with the rice.
Once again, I think I was scammed by the online hype, the skewers at Old Friends was fairly average at best and the other dishes were definitely worse than average with the fried rice being down right atrocious. Unless significant changes are made, I won't be back.
Price Range: $40 - $50pp
Taste: 5/10
Value: 5/10
Service: 8/10
Environment: 7/10
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