Food Review: Billy Kwong
Thanks to Shu’s suggestion, we all went to Billy Kwong for a dinner to try out the famous ‘modern Chinese’ dishes. Billy Kwong is a restaurant opened by Kylie Kwong — famous Australian Born Chinese chef. It’s a small restaurant in Surry Hills boasting organic and ‘bio-dynamic’ ingredients (we still don’t know what ‘bio-dynamic’ means). The menu was not very large as it fit on an A5 sheet of paper. In the end, we decided to go for something that was pretty Aussie (Sang Choi Bow), something that was standard Chinese (Crispy Skin Chicken) and something totally new (Caramelised Pumpkin). Here’s what us Asians thought…
Food: The sang choi bow was very nice. Even though it had some different ingredients (e.g. lap cheung and finely chopped carrots) in it, it wasn’t lame, like someone had just decided to chuck it in for the sake of making it look Chinesy. It was very tasty and delicious.
The crispy chicken was cooked very well with lots of sauce, shallots and other herbs. Not dry like it can be sometimes, but still juicy. The skin was done well — not too dry, and not soaked in by the sauce so much that it wasn’t crispy anymore. It tasted like an improved tasty version of the traditional Chinese one but did tend towards the salty side towards the end — the chicken must have soaked in all that sauce.
The caramelised pumpkin was surprisingly good. It was sort of sweet, but was also cooked with black beans, maybe to balance out the sweetness. The texture was just right and it was served as four large slices. Notably, the sauce actually cooked through the pumpkin pieces, not like how in some restaurants the sauce only covers the outside, making the inside just plain pumpkin.
We were surprised at how full we felt afterwards. I think the best thing about the food was that it didn’t shame Chinese food — it was an enhanced, tastier and modern version…
9/10
Price: It was very expensive for Chinese food. I guess when you take into account that this comment is coming from an el-cheapo Asian student, it’s Kylie Kwong’s restaurant and all the ingredients are more fresh, organic and expensive, you don’t really mind. But this also means that I wouldn’t go back, since you could eat crab or lobster at other restaurants with the prices we forked out. Sang Choi Bow was $24, Crispy Skin Chicken was $45 and Caramelised Pumpkin was $27.
5.5/10
Atmosphere: The place definitely wasn’t designed like those big Chinese restaurants. It’s a ‘eating house’, with the eating area smaller than Keith’s living room. As such, it was quite squashed and Amanda’s chopsticks fell off the table multiple times! You could only fit one dish comfortably on the table at any one time.
But of course, there’s the hype of going to a celebrity chef’s restaurant. Our group got there at 5:45pm and was second in the queue as all the customers waited for the place to open. There’s a nice amount of chatter in the atmosphere, you can see the open kitchen, displays of Kylie’s books are on the shelves and there is some nice, colour co-ordinated decor.
7/10
Service: Pretty standard I reckon. The waiters were helpful with the ordering and quick to take away empty dishes. The food came quite quickly which was a plus.
7/10
Overall, it was a nice, one-time experience to try some tasty and modern Chinese food that will leave your stomach very satisfied but your pocket a little :(.