There's good and there's bad at Northbridge restaurant institution,
Uncle Billy's Chinese Restaurant, but it's all authentic.
Speaking as someone who lived in Hong Kong for five years, I can tell you it's the real deal.
First, the good. A staggeringly broad range of tasty menu items, mostly inexpensively priced, and served quickly at almost all hours of the day and night.
Then the bad. An unimpressive first impression courtesy of grubby carpet combined with a complete absence of interior design. A woman we assumed to be an owner gave reasonable service, but other waitstaff were indifferent verging on brusque.
All this is typical of restaurants of its type in China, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go. Go, but know what to expect, and don't choose it for a first date.
It's worth a visit for a read through the menu alone. This packed tome lists hundreds of dishes, many beyond the Western imagination. Anyone for large intestine and tofu in a special sauce or beef stomach claypot?
Uncle Billy's Chinese Restaurant
There are, of course, other dishes easier for non-adventurous diners to try. Top of the list would be salt and pepper squid, which comes battered - and with lashings of my two favourite food groups, chilli and garlic. Yum.
Other safe choices would include stir fries, noodles, fried rice, and Chinese kai lan greens with oyster sauce. There is plenty for even the most unadventurous of diners to choose from.
And children and adults alike at our table enjoyed San Choy Bow, which the menu fails to explain. For the uninitiated, it is iceberg lettuce cups into which you spoon a mixture of warm chicken mince and fried noodles. A nice mixture of temperatures and textures... and you get to play with your food!
The restaurant attracts
variable reviews online. We dined during Chinese New Year, when it is unlikely that the B team - if any - would be in the kitchen. Those who rock up drunk at 3am might not be in the same position.
We dined as part of a large group but ordered more than we could eat - including a modest number of beers - and still came in at less than $30 a head for adults.
To avoid confusion, please be aware that there is another restaurant with a similar name nearby, namely
Billy Lee's Chinese Restaurant.
I didn't bring my camera to this meal but you can find some food shots on this review
here.
This is a kid-friendly venue, with one decorative fishtank and another containing lobsters and crabs on menu row, so to speak.
