Shang High Night - Ashfield

I must confess, I am a SMH good food guide junkie! I love where that book has taken us in search of good - often great food! More on that later...We decided not to take the 190km trip (each way) to Rylstone (29 nine 99 yum Cha and tea house - seriously amazing dumplings) but opted for a "Good food guide" Sydney based alternative. Ashfield here we come! We had not been to this bustling slice of Asia in Sydney for years and it was so nice to get back. The wonderful smells of great Asian cooking filled the air... we were actually excited to try out a new recommendation.Usually when you get to a good 'cheap eats' restaurant you have a wait, bit of a queue type thing... no wait here. The place at 12:15pm was empty.... a sign? An extremely clumsy waitress provided a bit of entertainment and eventually a few more diners wandered in.After a short wait the first of the 3 plates we had ordered hit the table. Pork and coriander steamed dumplings... the next pan fried pork and prawn then spring rolls... let's say the dumplings were nice.. ok... nothing that memorable.. flavours were ok but this is just not on par with 29 nine 99, or Din tai Fung etc - the spring rolls were boring! Really ordinary. The table next to us were complaining loudly that their main meal had hit their table (with no rice) before entree...Would I go back... no. Not at all. SMH good food guide? Who reviewed this place?? A cousin of the owners perhaps??? This is seriously not in the league of some of your recommended restaurants ... disappointed!

We stayed around Ashfield several times about 10 years ago and had a fine memory of nice Chinese food. We went there for a quick dinner last week but couldn't find any of the places we ate before and we picked this one as it looked popular but had a table. Oh, what a mistake! The worst chow mein I ever had!! And it was SO noisy. Will never go back there again.

The name is confusing with New Shanghai, therefore I accident went here instead of New Shanghai, when I found out it was too late, taste dramatically different from New SHanghai in a bad way....sorry no good, slow and bad service too...

Best pan fried bun, xiao long bao and congee! Very cheap compare to neighbour new shanghai. Better taste as well. Will definitely go back.

OK, so I live 6 hours south of Sydney where there is a dearth of quality Asian food so perhaps I am easily impressed... However for $46 I had a feed that would have easily done 3-4 for my mate McGill