Dragon Boat Restaurant Chinatown

A very cosy and relaxed atmosphere with fantastic service.
Highly recommended the stirfry noodles with bean shoots and soy sauce — yum!

Do not recommend. Obscenely overpriced, undercooked, and the cutlery and staff were dirty. Staff were rude and unaccommodating. If I could give no stars I would.

Open from 8am is nice thing to know. Dim sum served by wagons but they don’t come so often. So waiting time is bit long but good for Sunday brunch. Unfortunately my friend is allergy to prawns, and they have prawns in most of items. I understand people love prawns, so that was fine, but very disappointed that non of the service staffs cared about it, and irresponsibly told us ‘this one has only pork’ and actually had prawns inside — happened three times. Moreover, there was only one person in black suits, a lady, and we asked her any other menu available. She snapped ‘most of things have prawns, this time serve by wagons only’. Then later we found out they serve congee or steamed vegetables by request!!!

Tasteless dumplings. Expensive. Lacks character. AVOID.

That cold cold morning I was looking for something to eat in the early morning. Nothing was open except for this restaurant. No choice, try it out.
Yum cha.
We ordered — Chicken feet, Siew Mai, Dim sim, scallop dumplings, prawn chee chiong fun. Steam corn prawn, century egg and meat congee, spring roll,
Now there’s a lot of choices, but hey every round they are doing the same dishes! and the waitress can never reach the tables at the back because they were working so slow then.
The spring rolls were pure meat. Doh, no signs of veg?
Tea wasn’t refilled. And the congee we ordered was conveniently forgotten.
Last point– Expensive place.
Spend your money elsewhere.

I guess I’m the only reviewer so far who doesn’t hate this place; in fact, I like it a lot.
I only go here for weekend yum cha, usually on a Sunday afternoon. They have a good selection and the food comes out super hot and with plenty of carts.
On the downside, it is quite cramped and often packed. A few times, we’ve been seated upstairs with just a couple other tables and the service then was MUCH slower and farther in-​between than the busy downstairs.
But overall, great standard yum cha in a pleasant setting. It’s a solid CBD yum cha option that I would recommend.

The quality of service at this Chinatown «Dragon Boat» restaurant seems to fluctuate a lot. I have been to this restaurant only twice: the first time, in February 2012, and then again last night: April 2013.
Whether they have improved a lot since I was there a year ago, or whether this restaurant is just generally a hit-​and-​miss, is yet to be proven. My comments a year ago were:
«The service here sucks. And their menu is limited. You’re much better off trying Westlake just two doors up the road.»
Last night? I was blown away with how excellent the service and food were.
~ Food: Salt and pepper squid/​calamari from the «chef’s specials» menu is one of the best I have ever had — and I have had *a lot* of salt and pepper calamari. Also ordered the spicy chilli quail: sadly a little bit on the undercooked side, but certainly succulent and well seasoned. I still prefer the quail at the Chinese restaurant a few doors down, «Westlake.»
~ Service: Surprisingly outstanding. Our waiter was polite, accurate & drinks came out immediately.
~ It was ridiculously cold in the restaurant. It was 12 °C outside, and it felt about 10 °C inside. All the patrons were wearing their jackets. Absolutely perplexed why this is the case, but their air conditioners were clearly on.
Overall I am suspicious of this establishment and my inconsistent experiences make me question whether I would take guests here or recommend this restaurant. I’m going to have to go back sometime in the future to confirm my findings.
3013÷04÷05 update — one week later:
So I’ve gone back a week later on a Friday night to get to the bottom of what I think of this establishment. The young woman serving us was pretty rude, and one of our mains came out different to what we ordered. We clarified with her whether that was the [dish that we ordered] and she claimed it was (even though we had ordered a fried dish and this was definitely not fried). We got the manager to come over and he said it is definitely not the right dish, took it back, and ~40 minutes later~ we finally got the correct dish.
What does this mean? It means:
~ They can’t get an order right.
~ When they get an order wrong, they will lie about it.
Not impressed.

My fiancé and I were here from the United States and was really hungry. It was around 2pm when we got here. We noticed there were 3 tables seated with 5 servers on the floor. Took forever to get some tea and service. I understand we got there around 2pm so dim sum is limited. We were only serve 1 cart of dim sum and no one came back to check on us. Horrible service. We were still starving.
So we didn’t want to wait for anymore dim sum choices so we got the bill. Getting the bill took forever, probably took 20 minutes since no one was around and 5 servers were clutter around the cashier. We tried to make eye contact but that didn’t work. My fiancé just got up and decided to pay up front.
This is a tourist trap and we realized we fell into this place because it look so nice and pretty because it’s for tourists! Over price dim sum there you go!
I don’t think I will come back here since I’m not from here anyways. Going forward, only go to Asian places with Asians that’s how you know the food is good!

There is nothing better than eating chinese food in china town no matter in what part of the world. Melbourne’s china town is a great place full of all kinds of tiny restaurants and bars. I can’t quite put a finger on just one, but feel free to roam around and decide for yourself. Yesterday I had a delicious chicken with cashew nuts just at the end of Liverpool street.

Good things come in small packages, and Chinatown provides great variety. Explore the dingy alleyways and find hidden bars, clubs and restaurants. There are restaurants to cater for all budgets.

I quite liked Melbourne’s chinatown. even though it did seem fairly small & looking a bit run down. Spots have pockets of street art to discover around this area — which is great if you like to check this sort of stuff out.
Seemed to be a wide selection of asian restaurants to choose from to suit all budgets, including a few food courts which weren’t too bad! Some of the chinese shops had all sorts of weird & wonderful things on offer — like Placenta cream — EEK! Well located, very central in the city & good for a wander through when out n about in the city.

A lot of Australia’s chinese shops have been westernised, but Chinatown is Melbourne’s destination for a decent Asian meal. Some of the shops are small and dodgy, but there are also some more expensive swishy restaurants. The trouble is finding the right one to suit your tastes and budget.
I’ve been to a couple of Chinese restaurants but I’m still unsure which is best. My choice is at the top end of Chinatown, just off on Russell St. It’s a great little café similar to London’s Wong Kei — fast, cheap and cheerless but it tastes good!

Wie jede große Stadt in Australien hat auch Melbourne ein chinatown — wirklich sehr sehr spannend gerade für westler — es gibt tausent tolle (und auch mal etwas seltsamme) sachen zu essen und allen möglichen schnick schnack zu kaufen — natürlich gibt es auch restaurants und manchmal Veranstaltungen abends und am wochenende — jeder sollte chinatown einmal besucht haben wenn er in Melbourne zu besuch ist