Silk Road Chinese Restaurant, Haymarket Chinatown

Egg wrapped meat in spices with special sauce $11.80

There are two things that linger in my memory after eating at Silk Road, a cheap eats noodle house festooned with hanging carpets and under immiment attack by plastic grape vines.

The first is the smiling service by our gracious hostess. She is pleased when we show an interest in the grape vines, in the cuisine, in her culture, in her home town. She leads us to a map on the fridge and points out her village in Xinjiang, in the north-west of China. "Very beautiful, my home" she says with an air of wistfulness, her eyes shining. "Famous for jade and grapes and oil."

The other memory is one of lamb, and lots of it.


Fried pancakes with Chinese spring onion $4.00

The egg-wrapped lamb in spices [top pic] is an unusual dish, the lamb is soft and springy in texture, almost reminiscent of a lamb yeeros. There's plenty of cumin in this dish, and the egg wrapper is denser than I'd expect. It's a strong flavoured and rich dish, designed specifically for Mongolian winters, one suspects.

Fried pancake with Chinese spring onion is light and crispy. The spring onion is relatively mild in flavour (although perhaps our tastebuds have already been overwhelmed by lamb and cumin). We're happy about the portion size (six pizza wedges) and impressed by its non-oiliness too, all things considered.


Cucumber salad $3.00

Side dishes always provide a welcome palate cleanser, especially at $3 per serve. The cucumber salad is sweet and crisp, and mixed through with tomato slivers. Shredded potato salad is cool and surpisingly but deliciously garlicky.


Shredded potato salad $3.50


Fried hand-made noodles with lamb $8.50

The fried handmade noodles with lamb is the last dish to arrive. It even arrives with a pair of scissors so we can cut the long strands into more manageable lengths.

The noodles are wonderfully chewy, doused with an aromatic sauce and strewn through with plenty of lamb, onion, red capsicum, celery and green vegetables.

There's plenty of lamb and plenty of smiles too.



Silk Road Chinese Restaurant
QG13 Prince Centre
(street level on the Quay Street side, near Thomas Lane)
8 Quay Street, Haymarket Chinatown Sydney
Tel: +61 (02) 9281 9658

Open 7 days 10am-9pm

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