It’s been a recurring joke within our household that the names of most formal Chinese restaurants are essentially some permutation of the words “Jade”, “Empress”, “Crystal”, “Golden”, “Dragon” in front of “Seafood Restaurant”. Crystal Seafood Restaurant skips all this nonsense and has chosen just one word to put in front of Seafood Restaurant, across branches throughout Sydney.
We had a thoroughly adequate yum cha meal at Crystal Seafood Restaurant one Friday afternoon. Whilst I won’t go through every dish that we ate in detail, just imagine that the meal was generally very good and if I haven’t mentioned something that means there was nothing wrong with it.
The selection of food available for Friday lunch was quite limited, especially for the size of the restaurant and the significant size of the patronage. Whilst , as you will see, most yum cha favourites were available, items that were even slightly less standard, for example beef tripe, were nowhere to be found.
Steamed chive dumplings (韭菜饺) were good. Huge, full of prawns and chives.
Steamed spinach dumplings (菠菜饺) were also good, though I think less so than the chive ones. They had lots of garlic within.
Siu mai (烧卖) was very meaty with lots of meat and prawn. Good.
Both of these were also good.
And now to the bad.
The egg tarts (蛋挞) were cold, not warm, and one of them had pastry that had been ripped or torn off. How strange.
The pork ribs (排鼓) had a really odd smell that made me not want to eat them. They smelled like they were a bit off. This didn’t bother my partner very much, but then again she generally doesn’t refrigerate her food.
VERDICT
Pretty good, not bad, range very narrow, paigu not good, dan ta not good.
Crystal Seafood Restaurant Strathfield
29/11 The Boulevarde, Strathfield NSW 2135
(02) 9763 7738