Golden House

Golden House

760 Toorak Rd, Hawthorn East

(Ph) 9822 3100

We wanted to catch up with everyone from college but didn't want to always pay for the boys (sorry for those who are reading this :P) so we decided to go to a buffet place. A few of them didn't come to Golden House the last time we came, which was a couple of years ago, and since we always said such awesome comments about this place, they wanted to try it this time. 

It was quite disappointing this time, so I wasn't even going to blog about it, but then thought I might as well say why I thought it's gone downhill.

P and I got there at 7pm and a few of the others had seated already. We waited at the counter for someone to take our money (seriously - TAKE OUR MONEY! :P) but it was over 5mins of patiently waiting before P decided to just go sit down and deal with the payment later. Seriously, we could have just snuck =________=

This place is $25 for unlimited hot pot and Peking Duck. So the first thing P did was line up for the Peking Duck, he said he wasn't going to eat anything except duck the whole night lol. He lined up for well over 10mins I thought he disappeared. Turns out the dude cutting the duck is super DUPER slow... like he purposely makes you wait longer for the duck. Omg seriously is that necessary. And he was like that the whole night - normally P would go repeatedly to get more duck but he just couldn't be bothered and told everyone to take turns to do it haha :P

Peking Duck

The Peking Duck here has more meat than skin - which I don't mind 'cause I actually like the meat part more than the skin (so I'm really that crazy a fan of Peking Duck lol). It comes with cucumber and spring onion with the Peking Duck sauce and pancakes which I didn't take a photo of 'cause I wasn't planning on blogging about it before.

The steaming lady was just as bad. Every time I asked her when the dumplings would be ready she'd say "still not ready" even though she said it'd be only 7-8mins to steam them. So I had to keep going up to ask her for the dumplings - very frustrating! And then when I try to open the steam baskets to see if it was ready she would scold at me, even though she would be in the kitchen for ages and I'd have to wait ages for her to come out just for her to say the dumplings aren't ready. *sigh* Though the Xiao Long Baos were VERY nice! I can never get enough of XLB =) But I was watching her and they seem to be the ones you buy at Asian grocery shops, the ones that come in a box of 12 for about $4.50 - I've tried steaming them myself and they are DELICIOUS! <3 I don't remember them having XLB here before so that was a lovely addition =)

The meat buns weren't as nice as they used to be - the bun was slightly soggy and yeah, not worth my tummy space at a buffet. And they don't have red bean and custard buns like they used to :( Though they do still have the chinese pancakes, but now the lady cuts it up and puts it in the cooked food section instead of giving you the whole pancake which I guess is fair enough given how much food gets wasted here.

The hot pot food was normal - the best part are the taro balls <3 oozing out with taro (I forgot to take a photo of them :( ) They have cooked prawns now which I don't remember being there before. The boys thought they would get sick from eating cold cooked prawns but then thought it was okay to eat the intestines! They were too lazy to pick it out omg =______________=

They used to have unlimited drinks here but then they've changed it only 2 bottles per person, and $2 each for extra drinks - though I only drank one drink there and took one home :P I don't know how but I used to be able to drink 2-3 bottles here so I guess no complains from me. But I remember they used to tell us off for taking drinks home when it was unlimited, whereas now they've specified 2 drinks each I took my 2nd drink out infront of them haha :P

They used to also have these mini fried chinese doughnuts with custard inside that P and I really liked but they don't have them anymore :( Though I guess the addition of XLB made up for it :P

An hour after we had started eating, the counter lady finally got to us and asked how many of us had paid already so we went up to pay, but seriously! They're so unorganised we could have had the whole meal free without them realising :S

Anyway, I think this place has slightly gone downhill - but, it's still good for those who are just hungry and want to be fed with with lots of mediocre food! Slightly far away for a spur of the moment dinner though - took us 20mins on the train and then another 10mins walk from the train station.

6.5/10

C.
xo