China Beach Restaurant

 

Rating: 2/10 Complaints - Slow Service, Parlously Understaffed, Amazing Food, Sweet & Sour, Sizzling, Prawn Crackers, No Booze for Karen, Huge Fan, Chinese Food, BYO

On Valentines Day this year, Mr Karenson and I tried out this restaurant with our mates Bob and Linda. These guys are great value, accompany us on a lot of food adventures and have introduced us to a lot of great restaurants so we went with their suggestion of China Beach. The place used to be located along the waterfront but has moved approximately 200m and is now tucked behind the beach shops next to the hulk of Brunch & Burger, which used to be another great restaurant until they replaced the menu with subpar fare and Spandau Ballet and eventually closed. RIP.

I've heard it said that if a Chinese restaurant serves truly good food, they will most likely give all of their focus to the food and not fluffy things like the décor or service standards. This held true for China Beach, which had the pretty standard Chinese restaurant décor complete with a huge folding fan on the wall. Bob tells me that because this is the biggest fan of China Beach, he comes in as just the second biggest fan. I was very glad to know that he is not the only fan, and I envision China Beach attracting many more fans to come.

Poor Rex. I genuinely felt sorry for Rex. Rex is the name of the waiter/cashier at this fine establishment, and I was under the impression that the poor guy is single handedly in charge of the entire operation, which may or may not include cooking the actual food. A tall, spare individual with slightly limited English, he had at least 30 people on his hands that night and some of them had no manners, which I will elaborate on later. I believe he is probably a good dude who gets run off his feet and a little stressed, and prefers mobile games to waiting tables. I've waitressed before and I was much worse than Rex and managed to forget almost everything.

The restaurant contained several large round tables with lazy Susans. This is ideal for group dining, as it eliminates the problem of trying to serve up sweet and sour pork and getting a sweet and sour sleeve instead. We were seated at a round table set for 10 people at the back of the restaurant, so we had a few extra plates and serviettes which was probably just as well, as I'm clumsy as heck and managed to dip my sleeve in my own plate. I very rarely wear long sleeves for this reason.

Bob and Linda made good use of the BYO wine policy, Mr Karenson ordered bourbon and because I thought I would have to drive later on, I ordered ginger beer. Rex probably took 30 minutes to take the order for our drinks, and another 20 for the drinks to come out. I had to follow up on the drinks, which he sort of appeared to have forgotten about, likewise water glasses for our table. We also saw him duck out to the bottle store and return with a bottle of Canadian Club, so perhaps this was part of the delay on the drinks. As I mentioned, he was single handedly looking after quite a full restaurant so we can't be too hard on him. I actually admire and respect his dedication in procuring the booze, as he could just as easily have told us they'd run out and not bothered. I realise that Canadian Club is not actually bourbon but I'm inclined to give 10 points for trying, and Mr Karenson got his stiff drink so no real harm done. 

The restaurant does a good range of set menus intended to be shared between a given number of people. Even though there were only 4 of us and we really should have ordered the set menu for 4 people, we were hungry and had great intentions of taking home leftovers, so we insisted on ordering the set menu for 5 - 7 people despite Rex's attempt to talk us out of it and turn the menu page back to the listings for 3 - 4 people. He didn't seem very impressed but allowed us to order what we requested, which was surprisingly quick to turn up.

Rex set down each steaming dish with the air of someone feeding stray cats. First to come out was the appetizer platter, which consisted of wontons, prawn rolls, spring rolls and BBQ pork slices. All of it was splendid, fresh and good, and Linda reckons it took the edge off her early tipsiness quite well. 

The sweet and sour pork, sizzling lamb, cashew chicken and fried rice all appeared in quick succession much to our delight. I love the style of dining where you can choose from a variety of dishes and have as much or as little as you like, instead of having to order just one dish and ending up envying what your neighbour ordered. It's quite hard to get sweet and sour pork right, I've had some abominations that could be better described as sweet and sour batter, but this one contained mostly pork and was delicious. Even the lemon chicken, which was the last dish to turn up, tasted far less of dishwashing liquid than any other lemon chicken I've tried. I can't say I'm a convert to lemon chicken yet, but was able to enjoy this version instead of missing out. 

When I was a kid, I used to think prawn crackers were made from polystyrene and got a bit of a daredevil kick out of eating them. I learned at China Beach, that they're best enjoyed filled with fried rice. Really enjoyed this meal despite the haphazard service by poor Rex who I'm sure wanted nothing more than to be left alone to play Candy Crush and have his own dinner. I'd be keen to go back, perhaps when it's a little less busy, to have a bit of a banter with the guy and order a damn drink this time because I didn't even end up having to drive that night in the end.

The set menu was meant to include a chocolate sundae for dessert, but Rex advised they were out of ice cream so we were presented instead with an artfully arranged fruit platter. The pineapple was nice but I absolutely hate oranges and the apple was a bit mealy. I would have liked a sundae but definitely did not need one and probably couldn't have eaten it anyway as we were all so full. We didn't even end up taking the leftovers in the end because we were all too overstuffed and sleepy to think about the next day's food.

Unfortunately there are some people out there whose parents neglected to teach them manners and basic respect, and we witnessed a handful of them at China Beach. An older man seated at a nearby table was snapping his fingers at Rex for extra drinks, and his female companion was doing the same and barking "WATER" in an imperious tone. It's not the 50s anymore and you simply cannot behave in such a way to a person who is just trying to get through a hellish work shift, surely they have eyes and can see that Rex was on his own and doing his level best. Notwithstanding that acting like a dick generally works the opposite way of how you want it to. I hope Rex gets days off and a lot of nice food in exchange for putting up with the entitled and mannerless of the Beach, of which there are rather a lot. 

I still have questions about this place, namely whether Rex is in fact a one man band valiantly handling the cooking, service, till and dishes on his own like a sweet and sour superhero, and what his high score is on Candy Crush. We will return, the food was some of the best Chinese I've had and the service entertaining if not stellar.