Chungking’s menu sits on a pedestal outside their Burwood restaurant, and while novices like us will peruse it from the outside, likely making a plan or two for what to order before going in, all bets are off once one is actually inside. The walk from the front door to the dining table often provides us with a chance to see a selection of what’s good and popular at a restaurant, and on this particular walk we saw no less than 6 tables (around half of the diners) eating the same thing.
The specialty of the house was the Charcoal Barramundi. There is a choice between frozen and live barramundi, as well as a choice between other barramundi and other fish, including Murray cod. We had a live barramundi, which meant that the dish started at around $50. There was a choice of soup base, and being spice wimps we chose a mildly spicy garlic base. We thought that this would be the end of it, until our waitress told us that we needed to select three additional items at additional cost. We chose the fried tofu, some glass-style noodles, and baby bok choy each at an additional cost of around $5.
Luckily, this dish was actually quite good. The barramundi came butterflied, a bit fried and crusted on top with salt and pepper flavouring. It was supported by a bed of noodles, tofu, and baby bok choy as specified, keeping it crisp and preventing sogginess as we ate. I would probably do this again, but with a frozen dead barramundi rather than a live and then dead barramundi.
This lamb stew hotpot (I want to say, $32?) was the other dish that we got. Looking around the room as we left we found that other tables of two diners essentially just had the charcoal fish and nothing else. That would’ve been the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do was to order this dish as well. It wasn’t even really special. Might’ve been better with some rice.
Chungking Burwood
91 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134
(02) 8387 7809