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The hotel lobby is quiet, the tiny Golden Lily sign doesn’t promise much, and the lift to the first floor is hushed. Even when the doors open, there are only faint murmurings from the corridor. Is this the place? But then – around the corner, down the hall and into the restaurant – everything changes. It’s all go.

Uniformed waiters thread between tables carrying laden dishes and bamboo steamers. A lazy susan spins on a big round table sending chicken feet, pork buns and squid tentacles into orbit. Kids eat spring rolls with one finger on an iPad. Mums make sure grandpas get the last scallop dumpling.

Blue velvet chairs, carved partitions and dangling chandeliers lend a sense of grandeur and occasion, but the hubbub is a convivial, multilingual chorus on the chopsticked path to satiety.

The Yu family opened Golden Lily in 2018 when The Chen hotel launched, and their restaurant seats 180 people in an expansive windowed dining room and three private parlours.

There’s yum cha every lunchtime and an evening a la carte menu that reflects the owners’ Shanghainese origins. It’s licensed but BYO is fine. Yum cha dishes are chosen via a tick-a-box menu rather than trolley service: everything arrives hot and fresh.

The yum cha pace and cacophony can make service feel perfunctory but there’s an underlying pride in the offering that isn’t hard to access. I felt it keenly when I ordered too much – situation normal – and couldn’t take it away because I wasn’t heading home. Three waiters gathered, stricken that their excellent food wouldn’t be eaten.

Highlights among the 60-item menu include delicate rice rolls, made from scratch. I chose pork filling, which is marinated, roasted, then steamed within the rice rolls so the flavours meld and porky aromas catch in the snowy folds of the rice sheet.

Tripe is tricky but it’s perfect here: giving without being mushy, sticky but not cloying, and bathed in a sauce fragrant with star anise, funky with fermented soybean, and lightly touched with rock sugar.

Black gold quicksand buns are dyed with cuttlefish ink, lustre-dusted and filled with gooey salted duck egg custard that ebbs like quicksand. It’s a display of skill and a fun morsel.

The congee is a masterwork. Cooked for three hours, the rice porridge is creamy and smooth, studded with century egg and roast pork and sprinkled with crisp wonton skin.

Box Hill is busy with obvious delights: the Central shopping centre offers excellent eating and is easy to access with its train station. But this tasty suburb also has hidden treasures, Golden Lily among them. Push through the hush and earn your tripe stripes.