I was there on Monday and had the braised eggplant, capsicum and tofu hotpot - sounds vegetarian right? Well it came out with some unidentifable meat. My dining companions decided it was fish. *sigh* The tofu was heavenly however as was the Tsing Tao beer. Horribly overpriced but the meals came out almost too quickly

Don’t get me started on BBQ King. We went there a few weeks ago. There’s bad service and there’s bad service. BBQ King has the latter. We were there for a party and everyone was having the banquet except for 2 vegetarians. We explained that 10 people were having the banquet while 2 vegetarians were ordering their own dishes - entrees and mains. All the veg meals came out together first, a good 15-20 mins before the banquest entress began, so the vegetarians had finished their meals before anyone else started and then had to just watch everyone else eat for an hour. Then one of the waiters spilt A LOT of boiling stock over two of our group and then the staff scattered and all suddenly disappeared while everyone at our table hurriedly removed the wine from the ice buckets on our table and poured the ice water over the victims, wet items of clothing etc. We tried to get help from the waiters but they’d literally taken a look at what they’d done and run away! Finally, they charged us for 12 banquets instead of 10 and because the bill isn’t itemised (or in English) we only worked that out because it seemed to high and we got out a calculator and worked it out.

Bad experience aside, the food is quite nice but nothing special, the place isn’t very nice and it’s really expensive!

Hi Fiona - I hate it when a dish turns up with meat with no warning. Makes me very paranoid when I try out new places.

Davo - do you guys have some bad restaurant karma you want to talk about??? After your Canberra experiences and now BBQ King I’m feeling very grateful that there were no mishaps on Sunday. That sounds like a terrible experience. I’ve heard rumours of genuinely bad service experiences but have never had any myself. But scalding people and then not offering any medical assistance is pretty low.

Yep, I think I must have run a dodgy restaurant in a past life!

Hi Kate, thanks for this review. I’ve always avoided BBQ King like the plague (there’s something about dead ducks hanging in the window that puts me off!), so it’s interesting to hear there are actually some good vegie dishes.

Although noting the horror stories, I won’t be rushing there, but it’s useful to have late night City option.

PS Well done on the new look and feel and it’s lovely to see one of the Kazbah meals made it onto your banner.

[…] first moved to Sydney there were two Chinese restaurants that our friends consistently recommended: BBQ King and Golden Century. Part of their cult status came from their late night hours (the mercy of not […]

Hi Kathryn - great to meet you at brunch. Glad you like the new look. There are two Kazbah photos in the header… as I was going through the back catalogue I realised how few photos I’ve taken in natural light!