Kam Fook closes Bondi branch

The giant Kam Fook restaurant brand has taken a major hit, with its pin-up Bondi Junction restaurant closing and the sprawling 600-seat Kam Fook in Chatswood renamed King Fook.

Hoardings were erected last week at the Bondi restaurant, which opened to fanfare and positive reviews in 2005. But the group, which was selling 13,000 prawn dumplings a week in 2009, soon after entered a tsunami of bad publicity when a family became ill after eating food that contained salmonella at the Bondi Junction restaurant, which was fined $800 in 2011.

It didn't end there. In the same year the Bondi Junction eatery was made to pay $50,000 in fines and costs relating to penalties, including an offence where a customer found a cockroach in a gow gee.

Kam Fook was once the pin-up for mega-sized Chinese restaurants in Sydney with big plans for expansion, but a foray into the Victorian market saw a Kam Fook restaurant open and close in the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster.

A Westfield spokeswoman says it is negotiating with potential tenants for "similar usage" at the empty Kam Fook site in Bondi Junction.

She confirmed the Chatswood restaurant [which is also located at Westfield] had been renamed King Fook. The restaurant did not return calls for comment.