Rock Kung Restaurant

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Authentic Cantonese Cuisine

Rock Kung restaurant offers fantastic value for money Chinese cuisine, with soups and desserts starting at $2.50, seafood dishes averaging $13 and chicken or beef around $8. What's even better is the long trading hours with dinner served until 2am every night of the week. Lunch is served daily from 11:30am-3pm and dinner from 5:15pm.

Reviews of Rock Kung Restaurant

  • Vera Poh
    Vera Poh   13 reviews
    Imagine an old-style Cantonese diner in Hong Kong: busy, noisy, grimy, smoky and small. Then imagine Rock Kung at Glen Waverley in Victoria. In the early evenings, family sedans pull up outside the derelict shopfront and disgorge their passengers into a tiny waiting space.

    Customers find themselves pulling their shoulders in. They shuffle for standing room among clutches of people clamouring for a table. Those without reservations are brusquely turned away while others are asked to wait. The better-attired are offered seats on oil-slicked blue vinyl chairs. Others are left to contemplate the algae-lined glass tank of lobsters and cods. Or to salivate at the drape of roasted meats behind the front window. The chef wields his chopping cleaver with show-off panache. The cash register peels without hiatus inches away.

    When a table is finally evacuated, one of Rock Kungs long-serving troops lays white corrugated paper over more luxurious linen: one reasons that water must be more precious than trees on the warpath. The room heaves with three-generations of Chinese faces, cackles of overseas students and an odd smattering of blue-eyes. And in amongst them, harried waiters weave all against a backdrop of glaring bright light, dusty chandeliers, erstaz wood-panelled walls and Asian motifs.

    Fortunately, what it lacks in style, Rock Kung makes up with its menu. There is something for everyone: abalone, lobsters and mud-crabs for the middle-class Chinese palate; one-course rice or noodle dishes for the homesick student on a shoestring budget; sweet and sour varieties for the tentative explorer.

    Service is brazenly discriminatory. While all scruffy students are mostly treated with equal disdain, respect and dignity are otherwise proportionately calibrated with mathematical precision to the size of order. Its complimentary house-made broth is observed to be reserved only for those with substantial appetites and deep pockets a case in point.

    But if you are ready to cast away concern for all manner of small courtesies (or lackof) to experience good authentic Cantonese cooking, you shall be rewarded. Mostly.

    Rock Kungs roasted meats department is arguably among the best in town. Their barbequed pork is impeccably cooked just enough to tease out its full fragrance without expelling it. The fat-laced flesh of their roast pork is melting and tender even if its skin is Kettle-Chips crispy. But, above all, sink your teeth in a leg of the roast duck and be drowned in a torrent of juices and flavour.

    From the corner of the eye, one senses a sudden panic in the slimy waters of the fish tank: murray cods and barramundi ducked with haste, one to this corner, one to that. A net held at the handle by a staff sleeves rolled up and elbow deep in water lunged towards a young lobster. It flinches with pain, then succumbs. In a bucket, still subdued by the net, the hapless crustacean is presented to us. We nod. For the kitchen is waiting.

    On a plate, the crustacean returns in a glorious gown of vermillion and gold. It rests on a throne of noodles under a cascade of (slightly spicy) sauce. The snowy white flesh is plump and succulent, sometimes crunchy; the noodles are slurpingly smooth, almost rude. Paraphernalia includes a shell-cracker, a bowl of water for rinsing your fingers and wet towels. So, toss out all forms of decorum and embrace the space. At $50 for a pound of the lobster, the dish costs us $94.50 with the noodles. Albeit hefty, it is way more reasonable than the $120 one may spend for half a steamed (dead) lobster at seafood nosheries in the city.

    Also worth praising is the Seafood and Beancurd in Hotpot ($18): piping hot, the flash fried beancurd belies its brass-like exterior with a silken soft centre and comes with a jostle of fish slices, squids and prawns. As is the Deep Fried Flounder with Spicy Salt (15.50): suitably crispy and salty, the skin hides thin fine flesh.

    A worthy note of caveat, however: Asians tend to emphasise more on textures and less on unadulterated flavours. So, expect smooth and occasionally gooey sauces as well as masking mix of spices.

    The wine list is thin not that youd be surprised so bring your own if you feel the food and milieu is not heady enough.

    As in an old-style Cantonese diner, one emerges smelling like the food that has been consumed, a little grimy, a little bruised perhaps from the waiters cavalier neglect, perhaps from the prick of lobster claws. But usually satisfied. Gastronomically. Only.

    1 year ago

  • scmay
    scmay   23 reviews
    Food and price is great. Does serve seafood and the normal Asian delights. Their roast pork is one of the best in Victoria. Service is also good. The only minus point is that if you eat in on weekdays there is a minimum charge per head count. Not sure if this applies to weekends.

    3 years ago

  • vivvy
    vivvy   3 reviews
    A basic enviornment. Clean and pleasent. Servive was great prompt and experienced. The food was tasty and good quality

    4 years ago

  • Monday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM
  • Tuesday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM
  • Wednesday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM
  • Thursday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM
  • Friday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM
  • Saturday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM
  • Sunday:
    11:30 AM-2:00 AM

Restaurants

Dining Options

Bookings Eat-in Take-Away

Cuisine

Asian Chinese

Price Guide

Mains under $20

Licensing

Licensed and BYO

Features

Group Bookings Family Friendly

Menu

Dinner Breakfast Lunch

Daily deals near Glen Waverley, VIC

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Editorial Reviews

  • Rock Kung Restaurant

    Ultimate Melbourne

    Thursday, August 19, 2010

    Tired and emotional and heading home to the eastern suburbs after a big night out, looking for the perfect place to soak up the excess? Rock Kung has been saving many a soul for years. Peking duck and sweet and sour pork are popular choices, or fried eel in black bean sauce is the pick if you are feeling adventurous – all served by waiters in bow ties up to 2am. Now that is service with style.


  • Rock Kung

    TheAgeRestaurants

    Thursday, February 05, 2009

    HMM, recession. It's a funny old thing. While Toorak Road with all its empty shops looks increasingly like the set for the next Baz Luhrmann epic Kosovo, across town on the same Wednesday night, Glen Waverley is positively pumping.

    Sure, some people are drawn here for the bright lights and glamour of the Glen shopping centre, but another drawcard is the coffee bars and Asian cafes of Kingsway that are busier than a Collins Street liquidator. Branches of Asian chains like China Bar, Claypot King and Spicy Fish, with its fiery Sichuan food, have proliferated on the strip. Rock Kung is the exception. It's a long-running, stand-alone stalwart that seems to have been around since Moses played footy for the Thebes under nines.

    Source: The Age

    Full review on The Age

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