Billy Kwong

Ph: 9332 3300; 355 Crown St, Surry Hills 2010 www.kyliekwong.org

Modern Chinese, $$, * for Ambience
Open Dinner Mon-Thu 6-10pm Fri-Sat 6-11pm Sun 6-9pm; Licensed, BYO , Corkage $10 bottle; AE MC V; No bookings
Chef Mathew Lindsay & Kylie Kwong (29-11-08) Owner Kylie Kwong (29-11-08)

Mietta's Review
Loud, tiny, caringly decorated ... this is the engaging fusion of two of Sydney's more interesting chefs - the famed Bill Granger of bills and Kylie Kwong (formerly of Wockpool). It attempts to bring Chinatown to Surry Hills (at Surry Hills prices) with some of the less regular dishes - Oxtail with Chinese red dates, Tripe with Xaoxing wine, etc., but many dishes seem a bit standard and perhaps a little pale. Prices seem high, especially when you are seated around a miniscule table on a plastic stool. But the ideas are great and the energy of the two fits as well together as the name.

Other published opinions

Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2009 Score: 14.5/20 "It's difficult to have anything but respect and admiration for the ethically minded and culinarily gifted Kylie Kwong. Her tiny Chinese eating house - now carbon neutral and committed to using organic, biodynamic and Fair Trade produce - is busier than ever"

Gourmet Traveller 2009 Australian Restaurant Guide Score: * "Roll up-to Billy Kwong just before six 'clock on any given night and you'll find devotees and initiates alike waiting for the chance to taste Kylie Kwong's modern Chinese food"

Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2008 Score: 15/20, One Hat "It's Saturday, 6.15pm, and Kylie Kwong's tiny teahouse is full. Another 30 people crowd outside to add their names to the list, prepared to suffer waiting for up to three hours"

Gourmet Traveller 2008 Australian Restaurant Guide "It's not just the skilful touch with modern Chinese food that has diners lining up at the door of no-reservations Billy Kwong from six"

Sydney Eats 2008 "Kylie Kwong has taken the food of her ancestors and her family and invented a style of cooking so new it needs its own name - Kwong Kuisine"

Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2007 Score: 15/20, One Hat "Favourite Asian Media demands don't mean that Kylie Kwong has taken her eye off the wok. Her chic and tiny Shanghai teahouse has an open kitchen, three-legged stools, plenty of noise and barely enough room to swing a chopstick."

Gourmet Traveller 2007 Restaurant Guide Score: * "At this tiny-tabled, permanently packed neo-teahouse, adroit staff do a vertical limbo to bring you dishes from a menu with an increasingly broad interpretation of its mod-Chinese brief. Pork and prawn sausages appear with an entirely untraditional (and totally appropriate( salad of radish and apple, and though we're slow to see China in a splendid salad of chickpeas with lots of tomato and Nolan's Road olive oil, it quickly becomes clear why chopsticks didn't take off in the Middle East."

SBS Eating Guide to Sydney 2005 "If you grew up ABC (Australian-born Chinese), this is the food you ate at home; or rather it's a stylish, contemporary, earthy-beautiful (and, these days, organic when possible) version thereof. 'Contemporary meets homestyle cooking: really fresh-tasting food and clean flavours."

SMH Good Food Guide 2005 score 14/20 "It's early evening, but already Kylie Kwong's dimly lit, stylish but cramped Chinese 'teahouse' is busier than a Bejing peak hour. Leave your name and number, head for the pub opposite and wait for the call (pace the drinks, it may take 90 minutes or more). You'll be rewarded with an uncomfortable, three-legged stool and black lacquered table, barely big enough for the food, and probably be bumped by your neighbours or rushed waiters as they squeeze past"

SMH Good Food Guide 2005 Best Vegetarian "Kylie Kwong makes vegetables exciting"

Gourmet Traveller Australian Restaurant Guide 2005 Good Vegetarian Options "It's tiny and you can't book, but don't be discouraged because, wait or no wait, on busy nights, when the braised White Rocks veal tail arrives you will know how wise your investment of time has been. Billy Kwong is all colour and movement, and you could be forgiven for thinking you've been transported into a fully contemporary version of a Chinese meal kitchen for trendy workers"

Sydney Eats 2005 "It may be dark, noisy and cramped, but it's very chic; the food, sensational modern Asian from the wok of the woman with the quintessential Aussie name, Kylie Kwong."

Daily Telgraph NSW Restaurant Guide 2004, This high energy place is packed nightly. Except for one large table no bookings are taken, so be on the doorstep at 6.30pm if you want to be sure of a table.

SMH GFG 2004, Score 14/20, No bookings, And-they'll call you on your mobile phone when a table is free,'It's a curious phonomenon that sees folk wait more than an hour to sit on a three-legged stool at a tiny timber table and eat Chinese...That said, the produce is second to noe and the decor leaves most other Chinese restaurants looking like poor cousins.'

Gourmet Traveller Guide 2004-two black stars for casual dining, good vegetarian options-details updated-noisuy, over chatting and wok throwing. funked up chinese tea room, stir-fries, reliable. Expensive.

SMH, Good Living, 22/7/03, Matthew Evans,'A tiny space where author and ABC's latest telly chef cooks her produce-driven take on northern-Chinese home-style food.'