The Dynasty Restaurant

• Tweet
• Email article
• Print

Of all the yum cha joints in town, surely only one gives diners the chance to gaze at Ian Thorpe's budgie smugglers. Signed. This is just one advantage of lunch at The Dynasty, the Chinese restaurant at Canterbury-Bankstown Leagues Club.

Thorpie's togs take pride of place in the club's Hall of Fame room, along with Jeff Fenech's boxing glove, Daryl Halligan's kicking tee and Hazem El Masri's team jersey.

However, this room of treasures is tucked away, like the vast banks of pokies upstairs. A large indoor waterfall drowns any noise from the machines; if you didn't venture up the right-hand staircase from the soaring central atrium, you'd never know they were there. The leagues club is big on water features and foliage. Out the front, water cascades down a fake mountain set in well-tended gardens, like a scaled-down set from Dr No.

Sydney's top 10 yum cha restaurants

The revolving door, inset with epic floral arrangements, leads into the glass-topped atrium with its mini-jungle of real and fake foliage. Flowering orchids, elkhorn ferns, palm trees and the pokie-masking waterfall have their own soundtrack of recorded bird calls.

The path to The Dynasty leads through this giant terrarium. Pass under the pagoda at the restaurant's entrance and there is more water. Three bridges cross shallow moats into the various dining areas. You get the distinct feeling everything has been feng shui'd to within an inch of its life.

Apart from famous cossies, The Dynasty yum cha has other inducements. The main room is soothing rather than frenetic. We are slightly taken aback to be seated at a table in the corner too far from the trolley route to see what's on offer, but the staff are very good at coming over to recite their wares and don't seem at all put out when we decline. Even better, when we ask for something they don't have, they go off and find it straight away.

We start with congee, thick rice porridge studded with pork, mushroom and 100-year-old (preserved) egg, topped by crunchy crackers. Prawn rice noodles are a hit: three wide, slippery, chopstick-challenging noodle parcels stuffed with big juicy prawns. Another favourite are the mushroom dumplings. The golden rice-flour casing holds a fungi fest including enoki and shiitake with water chestnuts and pine nuts for crunch.

The chicken feet come in a Sichuan-style black-bean sauce, red and sweetish – the aficionado at our table prefers a spicier kick to this yum cha classic. A generous pile of whitebait impresses with good flavour and light batter but they're not hot enough. The only real dud is the soggy eggplant stuffed with what appears to be seafood extender.

A lull in trolley activity gives us time to sit back and regroup. The edge has been taken off our hunger and we can start to order more genteelly now. We observe our dining companions, mainly Asian, from young couples to extended families with bright-eyed babies to a mixed table of students. The comfortable chairs are padded with high backs and we feel pleasantly cocooned from the outside world. This, in accordance with casino-style thinking, is presumably the point. You feel in no rush to leave.

The trolleys start to trundle again. We have a flutter on a plate of scallop rice noodles, hoping they will live up to their prawn cousins but, alas, they don't. The scallops are small and scarce, which leaves too many noodles. The vegetarian rolls, on the other hand, are a treat. The pan-fried bean-curd wrapping, which is both crisp and chewy, contains sliced Chinese mushroom with carrot, bean sprouts, water chestnuts and almonds.

We're full but can't resist a basket of big, plump, juicy prawn gow gee; then we start looking out for dan tarts. They come piping hot, the egg custard light and the many-layered pastry crisp but not too flaky. And then we spot the mango pancakes. It seems early in the season for fresh mango but this gamble pays off. The stretchy bright-yellow pancakes contain generous slices of sweet fruit with fresh cream. Delicious.

Before leaving clubland, we investigate the rest of the facilities here, which include more restaurants, bars, a gym and a sizeable showroom. This is when we stumble across the Hall of Fame. With signed sluggos, piped birdsong and Dr No scenery, it's been a yum cha to remember.

Food: Yum cha daily, with trolleys on weekends and direct order on weekdays, plus a fairly standard Chinese menu.

Service: Friendly and efficient.

Atmosphere: Classier and more relaxing than your average yum cha restaurant.

Value: Good, especially considering value-added sporting memorabilia.

Noise: Fine, easy to talk.

Recommended dishes: Mushroom dumplings, prawn rice noodles, prawn gow gee, mango pancakes.

Click here for more yum cha restaurants