Chinese @ Golden Unicorn, Sydney

We flew to Sydney to stay for a few days after Perth, and we stayed a couple of nights with one of my elder sisters in Maroubra, an eastern suburb near the beach. We had a mini-reunion dinner with all three of my sisters at Golden Unicorn Chinese Restaurant near F's house, and it turned out to be a surprisingly good dining experience for a suburban restaurant. It was nice to have all four girls at one place because it certainly doesn't happen often enough! This restaurant is apparently quite popular for yum cha, as indicated by the reviews at eatability, but my Sydneysider sisters have only eaten at Golden Unicorn in the evenings so they can't tell me if the dim sum dishes are any good (dim sum are typically only served during the day). It's quite a nicely decorated restaurant, with better service than we've had at another Chinese restaurant elsewhere in Sydney. I'm sure this would make a lovely restaurant to hold a wedding banquet, or to celebrate a special occasion in a large group setting.

We decided to have the Peking Duck course since it appeared to be the restaurant's specialty. We enjoy eating Peking Duck, which is something we haven't had much opportunity to do since we moved to Japan 4 years ago (click here and here for early blog entries on Peking duck meals we had back in Perth). For around AU$47, this Peking duck course included 12 servings of each of the following: Crispy Skin with Pancake, Scallion and Sauce, the choice of Sang choy bao (stir-fried duck meat with vegetables in lettuce cups) or Duck Noodles, and the optional Duck Soup for just an extra AU$5. To have all three dishes (we chose Sang choy bao and had the soup) for only AU$52, this was even better value than the Peking duck meal I blogged about in 2005! We were all pleasantly surprised when each dish was portioned out by the waiter, which meant less effort for us.

The waiter announced (somewhat rather bluntly) that our duck was ready as it was placed on the next table, and then left for a short while which gave me some time to grab a couple of shots of the whole duck before he returned and proceeded to carve and portion on 12 thin pancakes:

The sang choy bao, lettuce wrap with a delicious minced duck filling:

The Peking Duck course would comfortably feed 4 or 5 adults as a meal, but we had 7 adults and 1 kid (not counting the toddler and baby in the company), so we also ordered a few dishes to supplement the duck. Requested dishes were Peking Pork Spare Ribs, Flying Fish Roe Fried Rice and Seafood Bean Curd Hot Pot. The Peking spare ribs dish was a favourite at our table with its deep fried crispy sticky sweet meaty goodness (I personally am not a big fan of anything deep fried, but everyone loved this). The fried rice was tasty and dotted with tiny crunchy spheres of the flying fish roe.

Porky spare-ribs; and the special fried rice:

The hot pot dish was technically not a hot pot but a clay pot dish, and it is often called a hot pot on the menu which can be a little confusing for both me and the restaurant. Clay pot dishes are one of my favourite dishes to get at a Chinese restaurant, and Golden Unicorn's version was pretty good, especially with egg tofu substituted, although I was hoping for more vegetables in it. Just as an aside here, the term "Japanese Tofu" is used by the Chinese to differentiate between the usual soy bean curd types and the egg tofu which can be bought in tubes and sliced into the typical medallion shapes. Amusingly, although egg tofu is indeed one of the many wonderful types of Japanese tofu, I have never encountered it in the tube shape here in Japan. And the Japanese certainly don't batter/deepfry/cook the egg tofu (known as tamagodofu) but rather enjoy this delicious non-soy-based custard on its own, cold. (By the way, I used to dislike tofu (the ones I grew up with anyway), until I came to Japan.)

I don't think anyone was thinking of having any dessert, but somehow the topic of Fried Ice Cream came up, and then everyone wanted one. We could choose from three types of syrup, and I shared a chocolate one with Rob. It was nice, but I must admit that fried ice cream is not a dessert I would order at a Chinese restaurant.

The yummy seafood claypot; and the fried ice cream:

A plate of complimentary fortune cookies was then placed on our table, and we laughed over the fortunes in each cookie. Overall this was a good dining experience, and my sister is fortunate to have a number of good restaurants near her doorstep.