The tastiness of the food at Sun Ming restaurant and the speed with which it is dished up is sure to impress.
It's one of the fastest and cheapest restaurants I've eaten at in Hurstville, standing out despite the city being packed full of Chinese eateries. Whilst a line at the door of other restaurants could mean half an hour of waiting, it's rare to have more than fifteen minutes pass between stepping over the threshold of Sun Ming and tucking into the food.
The restaurant keeps it simple whilst boasting a large selection of dishes- it doubles as a cafe, so it serves sandwiches, fish and chips and spaghetti at lunch alongside fried rice and sweet and sour pork. This is not a case where you have to be wary of dishes that appear to not be the specialty of the restaurant; about a third of the patrons at lunchtime are busily slurping up spaghetti or dashing in to grab a corned beef and egg sandwich.
Sun Ming staff members are attentive and brusque, bustling over quickly to take your order and get the food onto your table. The usual tea service is missing- there are no teapots, but your cups are refilled by waiters dashing around with a jug of hot, fresh tea. Those same waiters thump up and down the stairs by the register to deliver steaming dishes to patrons sitting on the second floor.
I recommend the beef with rice noodles, which comes on a large plate along with mung beans and spring onions. It's difficult to get this ubiquitous Cantonese recipe wrong, but Sun Ming excels in delivering it to us.
The noodle soups are also worthy of note- the yellow ramen-style noodles float in a clear, flavoursome broth and extraordinarily tender strips of your preferred meat. The noodles are so long that it's almost a struggle trying to lift them out with chopsticks. Don't even think about trying to twirl them like spaghetti.
The average cost of the dishes coming to just $10, it was an exceedingly fast and affordable meal that does not skimp on flavour or substance.