We finally made it to Zilver! I’d been wanting to try this restaurant in awhile, having read many glowing and enthusiastic reviews. A good excuse (not that we really need one, to go out and eat) came along when B was recently officially accepted as an Australian citizen. Instead of celebrating with a round of Vegemite sandwiches, we decided to go chinese! Doesn’t really make obvious sense, but a meal is a meal, and besides, I think it’ll take a lot more years of being a citizen before B would even so much as stand next to a Vegemite sandwich.

On our first visit to Zilver, we order off the menu – a task which in itself takes a considerable amount of time because everything sounds so good. Their salt and pepper calamari and whitebait is truly something. The tender calamari is very thinly sliced and coated in the crispiest batter, with just the right amount of seasoning. The whitebait is equally crispy, but fried just-so, such that it’s not dry inside, despite being very small morsels of fish. The crispy skin chicken is also incredible. Under a thatch of shredded shallots and coriander leaves, are pieces of chicken with beautiful lacquer-brown, crackly skin and super succulent flesh. The only let down for me was the eggplant and pork mince hotpot – which B and I always order whenever we go to a chinese restaurant. Zilver’s version is slightly sweet ‘n’ sour, with a tang reminiscent of canned pineapple, which isn’t bad, but also isn’t what I look for in an eggplant hotpot.

If you’re coming here for yum cha, don’t do what we did, and arrive on a Sunday morning with an empty stomach. The hour+ wait it took us to finally get a table had me almost wanting to gnaw on the arm of the lady announcing the numbers through a microphone. Come oooon, number 92! Finally, bingo!

The wait is definitely worth it; the atmosphere, fantastic. As you enter, the dining room before you is just a sea of tables, around which gather heads bowed over rice bowls. An army of smartly dressed waiters flit between tables, clearing empty steamer baskets and refilling pots of tea, while trolleys of goodies make their slow circuit of the room. Highlights include the salt and pepper spanner crab, vegetarian dumplings and the egg custard tarts we had to finish the meal. Some people judge their entire yum cha experience by these tarts alone. I don’t, but these warm, incredibly flaky and intensely yellow morsels are definitely one of the best I’ve ever tasted.

Zilver Restaurant
Level 1, 477 Pitt Street
(snr of Hay Street)
Haymarket 2000.