The Panda Yum Cha
Shop 3390, 55-61 Talavera Rd
Macquarie Park, Sydney
What strikes you as you walk in the door at The Panda Yum Cha is the wonderful decor here. It really does have an atmosphere that makes you stop and stare. It’s big - with a long room stretching out before your eyes. You can’t help but look up too as the ceiling space has plenty on show as well. Atmosphere isn’t everything, we all know that, but it certainly doesn’t hurt either when its really nice! The Panda Yum Cha is a chameleon. By day it’s a yum cha venue churning out quality house made goodies and by night it’s a quality Chinese restaurant. We visited in the evening.
The wine flowed right from our arrival and through the night. They have a decent list here too. We were drinking a W 1912 2015 Shiraz and this was a very nice drop. Also throughout our meal we had Chinese tea too which went nicely with our feast.
First up was the crispy calamari. We love our seafood and this is a favourite dish of ours. This version had a nice crispness with perfectly cooked tender calamari inside. You want a crunch with this and it had it and you want the calamari to be tender. You want good flavours too. All three boxes were ticked here!
The Thai Style Roast Pork was a really interesting dish for a Chinese restaurant. It’s good to see the versatility on the menu here. This dish was thinly sliced pork layers that were beautifully tender. They were served with a sweet chilli sauce for dipping. The meat melted in the mouth.
The Fried Shrimp balls arrived golden and hot at the table. How good were these! The crisped almond slivers on the outside added a wonderful crunch and the contrasting tender and juicy prawn meat centre was tasty too.
The first stage of Peking Duck was next. Sir loves all things duck so this was a winner with him. The duck itself arrived spread out on a long dish with its beautiful crispy skinned glistening on top of tender juicy meat. We all dived in and added the meat, sliced cucumber and greenery to the pile of wafer thin steamed pancakes.. Of course the mandatory Hoisin sauce was the finishing splash on it all before folding and eating. This was a great mouth watering sensation.
The second part to the Peking Duck was with Chinese Lettuce Wraps. This variation on traditional san choy bow, done with duck, was great. The crispiness of the lettuce contrasted nicely with the tenderness of the filling creating a great bite sensation with lots of flavour.
One of the highlights of the night, in a night of highlights, was the Hong Kong Crispy Garlic Lamb Racks. This was an absolutely magnificent dish! The crispy garlic coating was beautiful with such great flavours and textures. The meat was so tender underneath it all too. Everything about this dish worked and it all combined so well. This is a must have dish!
The Black Pepper Beef Tenderloin Cubes then arrived at the table. These were a fave of Mlady’s. They were perfectly bite sized pieces of beef and oh so tender. The meat literally melted in your mouth. The snow peas and mushrooms added texture and further depth to this very tasty dish.
The Fruit Sweet and Sour Pork was another favourite for both of us. The pieces of pork had a lovely crunch on the outside with perfectly cooked tender pork inside. Sweet and sour pork is still a heavily ordered dish around town and doing it well is important. Here it was great with very nice sweet and sour sticky sauce coating it all.
The Prawn and Bean Curd Hot Pot was a spectacular dish. Mlady loves bean curd and feels that this can go with just about anything. There was so much going on with this dish! The ample supply of prawns in the dish were so tender as of course was the bean curd. We again really enjoyed this.
One of the most unique dishes of the night was the Steamed Mixed Mushrooms with White Gourd. This was a very different and impressive dish with lots going on. We loved the earthy flavours of the steamed mixed mushrooms and the ring of white gourd underneath added a more solid texture to the mix. If you’re looking for something a bit different then this tasty dish is worth trying.
East your greens, we were always told! Well, the Dry-Fried Green Beans with Minced Pork is certainly a good way to do this! It’s such a vibrant dish that can be a side or much more.
The Pineapple Chicken Fried Rice was a tangy mix. We both really like fried rice dishes, especially when they’ve been creatively enhanced. They are so versatile. You can eat them by themselves or use them to soak up the sauces from the other dishes. This was a tasty combination.
The more unusual dessert of Wolf Berry and Osmanthus Jelly then arrived. It looked great jiggling on the plate. This was a very pretty and elegant dessert. It was nice and light with the Osmanthus jelly resembling Champagne in colour and dotted with the vibrant wolf berries.
Chinese Mango Pancakes are always on our hit list. These were seriously good! They were nice and plump (in fact some of the fattest we’ve had - so good) with a great mango filling and flavour and a scrumptious creamy centre.
We were fortunate to be invited to visit The Panda Yum Cha for an amazing event. hosted by the dynamic Mick Teasdale from Hungry Diner. Mick made sure that everyone enjoyed themselves and was well looked after. He assembled a great crowd of influencers and there was certainly a lot of on-line activity on and after this wonderful night.
Sir and Mlady dined as guests of The Panda Yum Cha. Special Thank you to Mick from Hungry Diner for arranging our visit. Big Thank you to Amanda Wang, Chief Marketing Officer for the restaurant group for chatting with us too. We’ll definately be back for dinner, as well as lunch to try their house-made yum cha too.