The Mouth: Testing Chinese eatery at centre of Labor’s ICAC scandal
It was the scene of the infamous Chinese Friends of Labor dinner — where over lashings of fried rice and chilli prawns — $100,000 cash in an ALDI bag changed hands. So does the food at The Eight in Chinatown stack up? The Mouth finds out.
Sydney Taste
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It’s not every day a corruption investigation turns up a restaurant recommendation.
So when ICAC turned up a major scandal centring around a Chinese Friends of Labor banquet, The Mouth knew what he had to do: Make a reservation at The Eight in Chinatown.
The Eight sits up the escalators in the Market City complex, and at night this doesn’t make for the warmest welcome: The only other business open is the TimeZone arcade next door (the driving game is really fun after a few Tsingtaos, by the way).
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Up the front by the door there is a wall of fame covered with shots of the owner with various Chinese pop stars and local left-wing luminaries, which could make for a fun game if you were waiting for a table: “Hmm … there’s Kristina Keneally. And … Kevin Rudd. And … hey, Malcolm Turnbull! Bingo!”
Anyway, the plan was to recreate, bite by bite, Labor’s now infamous Chinese Friends of Labor banquet back in 2015. After all, even if the restaurant itself had no involvement in any wrongdoing, we had to know how the food was on the night.
But then The Mouth and his compatriots compared the pedestrian fare offered to donors with the a la carte menu and called out like a chorus of jaded teenagers: “BOR-ING!”
Like, who wants to hand over a shopping bag full of cash when the most exciting thing your hosts have sprung for is “braised mince chicken with tomato and rice”? Maybe it sounds better in Chinese.
Having discarded Labor’s how to vote, we decide to go our own way. As in the Upper House, it’s best to order below the line.
Drunken chicken are a cool, sweet start to the meal but came in a dish with a chunk the size of a 5c piece broken out of the rim — a weirdly careless way to kick things off.
Some little pork spare ribs arrive in a sharpish, vinegary sauce. More please.
Steamed oysters with glass noodles and an XO sauce are tasty but lacked oomph.
A hot and sour soup, however, is clearly a point of pride with the kitchen, all gelatinous and warming and with a heat that gently builds like a wood-fired stove.
Salt and pepper calamari and whitebait show a deft hand with the fryer. Prawns with chilli and cashews is a winner, but needs more of the heat the chilli icon on the menu promises.
The special seafood fried rice, however, is an exercise in irony: pricey, approaching $30 for the plate, and full of various morsels of seafood, it is sadly less than the sum of its parts.
Speaking of costs, it’s easy to run up a tab here, even if you steer clear of the pages of live seafood dishes marked with the words “Market Price” — a scary phrase in any language for those of us not backed by a Chinese billionaire.
The problem with The Eight is that, much like its state Labor patrons, it is trying to be all things to all people, and thus it fails to focus on an area of strength and just go for it.
Or to put it in ALP terms, there’s a fine line between “whatever it takes” and “whatever, let’s get takeaway”.
VERDICT: Too centrist
LICENSED: Yes
CARDS: AE MC V Eft
OPEN: 10am-3.30pm and 5.30-11pm daily
PRICES: Depends who’s backing you
VEGETARIAN: Plenty
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Yes
NOISE: Calmer than you’d expect
PRO: Super starters
CONS: Not so special rice