Chairman Mao Chinese Restaurant

By Franz Scheurer – 17^th December 2009

Chairman Mao Chinese Restaurant is a ‘cut above’ in many ways: it’s well designed, uses comfortable chairs and the tables even have a compartment for your handbags. Crockery looks terrific and matches the overall colour scheme and the chopsticks are good quality. Service is quick, friendly, attentive and informed; something we aren’t necessarily accustomed to in a Chinese restaurant in Sydney. This is a buzzy, noisy and engaging restaurant and street parking is not too hard to find, either. The wine and beer list is acceptable and I save the best to last: the food is sensational!

They highlight the food of Hunan and the food is spicy, hot and uncompromising. Most of the clientele is Asian and I urge you to make the trip and eat there. It’s fantastic!

We ordered a large variety of dishes and were told (as usual) that this was far too much food. Usually we simply take the rest home, as it is important to try as many dishes as possible, but we managed to eat so much that there was nothing to take home.

We started with the ‘Hunan style fresh bean curd’, thin strips of chilli laden, hard tofu with sesame seeds ($5.80), the ‘Celery salad’, a selection of pickles with chilli oil ($4.80) and the ‘Pickled radishes’ salty, briny and hot slices with, you guessed it, a good ‘hint’ of chilli ($4.80). ‘Stir fried broad beans with preserved mustard and pork mince’ arrived next and the ‘crumbly’ texture of the beans with the heat of the mince was a life-changing experience ($15.80) A dish of ‘Stir fried harbour shrimps with leek and hot red chilli’ had great flavour but the prawns were not so good. In reality, in most places this might have been the highlight of the meal, here, in the company of the other dishes, it was a little ho-hum ($19.80). Just when you thought there was no room for improvement, the ‘Stir fried lamb with cumin spice and hot red chilli’ arrived ($18.80). Sensational! The cumin flavour was so strong it made your eyes water but it never missed out on balance, either. Then my dish of the night arrived: ‘Steamed farm eggs and black-bean sauce’, a mild, moreish egg custard with a wonderful under-current of salty black-beans ($15.80). ‘Stir fried eggplant with green hot chilli’ ($14.80) and ‘Stir fried cucumber with perilla spice and red chilli’ ($12.80) provided the ‘green’ component of the meal. We also ordered ‘Chopped green onion pancake’ ($2.00 each) and to my palate they were not up to standard, being soggy (I guess the oil was not hot enough) and lacking is salt but in the company of all the other food this could easily be over looked. The last dish was ‘Stir fried house-made smoked pork with five spice bean curd’ ($18.80). This dish was fabulously smoky, hot-smoked by the owner using wood-chips and rice. If you order this dish I suggest the first thing you do is turn the content of the dish upside down and start eating from the bottom up. This way you get pork and bean curd that has been infused with the flavours of the sauce. The meat itself is a little dry but there’s enough fat on it to lift this dish from good to great.

All in all this was not just good; it was superb. Some of the best regional Chinese food I have eaten in Sydney, served with a smile, all at very affordable prices. (And they never ran out of Tsing Tao!)

Will I go back: Yes

Did I love it: Yes

Should you go: an emphatic Yes

Noise level (average): 81 decibel

Score: 8/10

For more information and bookings:

Chairman Mao Chinese Restaurant

189 Anazc Parade

Kensington NSW 2033

Tel.: 02 9697 9189

Note: they close for a month after Christmas!