Tim Ho Wan

The quality and quantity of the food are far below the average YumCha places. It is overpriced and over rated. I will not come back.

This was a bit anticlimactic. So I’d heard about THW opening in Chatswood, heard about the massive lines, decided to wait til the crowds died down, then discovered that it had opened in Burwood!
I went around 6 PM on a weekday. There wasn’t a line yet, and we were able to get a seat right away. (There was a line by the time we left.)
We ordered:
— baked buns with BBQ pork
— pork dumpling with shrimp
— wasabi salad prawn dumpling
— broccoli with abalone scallop sauce
— rice with chicken, sausage & mushroom.
The price was okay, and the food came fast, but… I dunno. OK, to be honest, the baked buns were really good. The outside is like a Papparoti bun, with this sweet crumbly coating, and a pork bun inside. It’s a really yummy mix of sweet and savory, and I would definitely come back for this.
But everything else was just okay. It wasn’t too bad, but when it came out it was kinda small and I couldn’t help thinking that I could just go to Chinatown to eat dumplings for a fraction of the price (admittedly, THW gave me more elbow room…)
Would come back for the baked buns, but for not much else.

Ugh. the queues and the hype has done this place wrong. Definitely not worth queuing. I came in when there was no queue, sat down right away. Ordered a prawn rice roll and shiu mai.
It was pretty gross. Tasted bland and poorly thrown together. Whatever restaurant it was in HK that won a Michelin star was definitely not remotely similar to this! Save your money and go down the street for some authentic Canto food.

First time — staff were very helpful and friendly! I loved the food and the way you order — it’s all about the sharing and I love it! Would definitely recommend Tom Ho Wan and will come back again!!!

Close, but not quite…
Alright let’s get what they did well first, the service was noticeably more attentive, a little more restaurant and less fast food eatery like, tick. The pork buns were oddly rounder than Chatswood/HK’s but just as delicious and somehow even more crunchy, tick. The lotus leaves rice, radish cake and mango sago pomelo were good, tick. The seasonal special shu mai and deep fried tofu were ½ the size of the ones in the pic but still delicious, tick.
What didn’t go so well was the cheong fun and steamed beacurd rolls, it was just too sweet. Even for HK cuisine flavours, which tends to be on the sweet side of savoury in terms of Cantonese food (we put sugar in our bolognese and salt in our lemonade, yeah we’re cool like that). The general consensus on the table is the chef must’ve gotten this particular batch of sweet soy base wrong and added too much sugar.
Now the ugly, the steamed chicken rice… oh we didn’t like that at all, the rice itself weren’t steamed enough, team that with the use of sweet soy instead of normal soy (the larp cheung and mushrooms are sweet already) that gives you pre-​made frozen sweet rice that’s half thawed. Yes it tasted as good as it sounds.
To be fair, Chatty THW gets it wrong sometimes too but not like this. Unless I’m in the area already I might swing by for the buns and mango pomelo sago but I would rather brave the bridge if I wanted a big THW feast.

I honestly would not even give it one star. As a yum cha enthusiast, this restaurant is a complete disgrace to it’s overseas counterparts.
1. FIRST OFF, WHAT KIND OF RESTAURANT DOESN’T HAVE IT’S OWN BATHROOM??? If you want to go, head back into Westfields. I watched so many people leave for almost 15 minutes before coming back because of how far the bathrooms are and that doesn’t include waiting lines.
2. «Refillable tea» is $ 2.50 per person and by refillable it means you have to call them to fill up a plastic cup that doesn’t retain the heat of the tea. Also, there’s no other tea options like all other yum cha places. There’s no chrysthanthemum, oolong etc etc, it’s just Chinese tea and they don’t even give you a teapot!
3. I honestly don’t reccommend the chicken feet, it’s just braised and chuckled into some sort of sauce that just tastes like bland soy sauce. I want my original chicken feet with black bean. What you get here is NOT chicken feet that you get at other yum cha places (It is my favorite dish at all yum chas so I am completely disappointed.)
4. All the dishes with prawns are so so salty! The dumpling, the bean curd wrapped prawn, the siu mai with prawns, they are like sticking a spoonful of salt into your mouth.
5. Tables are small and table service is close to horrible. You only have a tiny list to pick from and when they bring out the food, they just shove it onto the closest open space on the table, doesn’t matter if it’s close to you or not.
I was originally hyped about a name from Hong Kong but I am more than disappointed. This is not a yum cha restaurant at all and to call it that is a disgrace to it’s original restaurant in Hong Kong and all the other yum cha places in Sydney.