Bobby Kong is ready to add his touch to the menu three years after buying Bungendore Chinese. Photo: Tenele Conway.
In almost every regional Australian town there is a Chinese restaurant. You’ll find them in RSL clubs, in historic pubs, in standalone shopfronts or sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a jeweller. They might be sprawling, they might be a hole in the wall, they might do yum cha or they might have a special sizzling dish that spits hot oil on you.
Bungendore’s Chinese restaurant is in a bowling club. It’s a low-key location that belies the solid reputation it has for excellent Chinese food, and it’s owned by a man named Bobby Kong.
Bobby purchased Bungendore Chinese three years ago from Tan and Sunny, a Chinese couple who were well known in the town after running the restaurant for more than 10 years.
Buying a successful Chinese restaurant in a town with an endless appetite for Chinese food seems like a surefire way to hit the ground running, but for Bobby, it also came with an immense amount of pressure to live up to what Tan and Sunny had built.
“They have a really good reputation here. I have to keep up their quality and standards, as I haven’t changed the menu so I need to make the same taste. People get used to something, and they don’t want to change,” Bobby said.
Bobby has added all new furniture and invested in his restaurant. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Having owned a Chinese restaurant in Castlehill, Bobby is an old hand in the business, but with the pressure of living up to the former owners, it is only now, three years in, that Bobby is ready to put his own stamp on the menu.
The approach he has chosen is to keep the existing menu and to introduce some of his own dishes to it. The approach may seem hesitant, but it’s well played in a town whose community has expressed their desire for continuity when it comes to their favourite Chinese food.
“Our new menu has some fish fillet dishes, fillet steak, we’re doing laksa for winter, and we’ve added some desserts,” Bobby said.
There have also been welcome changes to the decor, and the restaurant is looking pretty spiffy with the old rickety plastic furniture replaced with good quality and beautifully designed hardwood furniture.
“I’ve invested a lot into the restaurant to keep it as good as before and to take it a level up. The kitchen is new; I’ve put in new dishwashers and fridges too.”
To further explore the tastes of Bungendorians and to bring variety, Bobby has specials like roast duck planned and will be testing some special Sichuan dishes to see if the town likes spicy. There will also be meal deals like a free chicken and sweet corn soup on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Having grown up in a country town with at least half a dozen Chinese restaurants, I’m continually fascinated by the intersection between Australian and Chinese cuisine, and after spending time travelling the length of China in my 20s, I have always been suspicious of people claiming that Australian-Chinese food is nothing like what you will find in China.
To settle the internal quandary, I asked Bobby how he saw this cuisine that Australians love so much. Bobby said that while this was a westernised, sweetened version of Chinese food, that primarily resembled Cantonese food from the Hong Kong region, many of the dishes were how you find them in China.
“In Cantonese food we don’t use a lot of spices or chillies; we let the natural flavour come out, and we cook it with chicken stock to make the natural flavours tastier,” Bobby said.
“We often change the taste to suit Australian tastes but the sweet and sour pork, that’s the traditional taste. The honey chicken or lemon chicken that’s traditional. You can find many of these things in China, like the rock salt pork chop, the chilli beef and the salt and pepper chicken.”
Bungendore Chinese serves up all the classics plus a few more. Photo: Martin Conway.
It’s impossible to talk to anyone in hospitality in 2025 without the discussion of how the cost of living is impacting their business, and Bobby shared the sentiments of so many in the industry.
“It’s not a good time for the small business, especially for hospitality.”
Business owners like Bobby are the backbone of our regional towns, and Bobby is meeting these challenges head on.
You’ll find him in the restaurant greeting customers, asking for feedback on the dishes and personally thanking people for their support. It was refreshing to see someone so hands-on in their restaurant and someone who so diligently wants to get it right.
As far as what to eat, frankly, it’s all good. The Singapore noodles are lovely and smoky just as they should be, the steamed dim sims are the size of bowling balls and super juicy, Bobby’s char siu pork that appears in a range of dishes like the BBQ pork with plum sauce is particularly good, the combination short and long soup is a hefty bowl filled with all the best things plus noodles and wontons and the rock salt squid is delicately battered and pops with garlic and chilli.
Bungendore Chinese Restaurant is located at 20 Turallo Terrace and is open from Wednesday until Sunday for lunch and dinner. You can follow it on Facebook for updates on the new dishes.
