Eastwood Garden Peking Restaurant, Rowe Street, Eastwood

Eastwood Garden Peking Restaurant, Rowe Street, Eastwood
Saturday 17 December, 2005

According to some this restaurant offers the best peking duck in Sydney. Better than Golden Century, BBQ King etc etc? This, I had to try for myself.

Eastwood is not a destination I would typically drive to on a Saturday night. The best aspect was the parking, it was in abundance and it was free. Eastwood is also home to a large Asian population, hence the number of Chinese and Korean restaurants.

I had come prepared. Earlier this year I had visited China and experienced the best food I have every tasted. Since that time I've been on a mission to find comparable food in Sydney. Big ask but I'm up for the challenge. About 5 weeks ago I was sitting next to a lady in our employee induction program at work who had just transferred from the Beijing office. I took the opportunity to talk food and asked her to write down for me in Chinese characters the dishes we discussed. So, I had this piece of paper with me as I entered Eastwood Garden Peking Restaurant.

The decor wass basic, the buzz was loud and the crowd were primarily local families. There is a ramp into the restaurant where people queue while they are waiting for tables. This ramp was continually full between 7 - 9pm, it didn't let up. We were seated alongside the ramp so dealt with the hungry looks from the ramp as each dish was presented to the table.

We ordered a feast of mermaid's tresses (lightly deep fried crispy chinese cabbage, cashews and pork floss), steamed prawn gow gees, peking duck (pancakes only - the duck noodles were to take away), grandma's beancurd and sizzling king prawns. It was all good but not great and certainly not the best Chinese food I have eaten in Sydney.

As we had ordered so much our very pleasant waitress bought large take away containers to the table so we could scoop in what we wanted to take home. I've never seen that done before but I will be enjoying duck noodles and grandma's beancurd tomorrow.

Eastwood Garden Peking Restaurant - 167 Rowe Street, Eastwood - (02) 98041289