The Lucky Bee 189 Ocean View Road, Ettalong Beach, New South Wales 2257

"Good food but way overpriced and poor service. $31 for two tiny bao buns?? And there is a misleading sign outside advertising lunch specials - but the heading "lunch specials" is barely visible. We asked for the dessert menu after finishing our meal, which the waitress acknowledged and then never came back. We were one of two tables in the restaurant and they had two front of house staff on so it's not like they were too busy to attend to us - they were both killing time by wandering around straightening cutlery on the empty tables. We waited half an hour and no one even came to offer us more drinks or otherwise check that we were being looked after. We also saw the waitress get the drink order of the man next to us wrong. After that, getting slapped with a 15% Sunday surcharge felt pretty rich."

"I really wanted to like the lucky bee! The restaurant looks really nice decor wise and the menu offers some good options that you don’t often see in this area. But they really need to do something about their large glass front window. 2 people walked into this within 20min a of us arriving. The food was good but the service and the the wine incident let them down and made me feel like we had been scammed. We had bang bang chicken, duck spring rolls and prawn curry. Food was nice, it had good flavours, some things were a little on the mild side, but the ingredients were fresh and tasty. portion sizes were good. Price seemed to be a little more than you would expect from similar restaurants but only by like $3-$5 per dish so overall food was worth it. The presentation of some things could be improved, serving the spring rolls in those horrible plastic red baskets felt cheap and didn’t suit or match the other dishes. The service was a big let down. The waitress just seemed really unbothered and wasn’t very attentive at all. When bringing the wine to the table, she put the bottle down and went to walk away but turned back and asked “did you want me to open it?” When we said yes she twisted the cap to open it and then walked away leaving us to pour our own glasses. I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect she would open and pour the $62 bottle of wine. They were busy but not full and the staff didn’t seem to be rushing so not sure why their service seemed so absent, we had to really wave them down a few times for basic things as they never checked on us. The wines on the menu were all around $60-$80 per bottle, which was fine given the brands and regions they were from (although it did seem odd that their wine list prices were so high given their food prices, I would have expected cheaper options, but I like nicer wine so happy to pay for quality). The wine we ordered was not the wine given to us. When I questioned this (I only noticed after it has been opened as it came in the bucket) and was told “oh yeah no, it’s different… didn’t someone tell you?” I said no at no point did the waitress say anything and was told “haha oh sorry she should have said, but it is the same price though”. Except it wasn’t, the wine we ordered is $15 from Dan Murphy’s (I know as I’ve purchased it before) it’s not the same price or quality as the one on the menu and it’s rude and unfair that they are charging people for this. The tables next to us seemed to get a different wine to the one they ordered too. For a place that has only been opened a little while it was pretty disappointing and the lack of care from the staff is enough to make me not want to return. Management if you read this, please think about updating your wine menu as you are effectively knowingly ripping people off. Or at the very least, have alternative wines that are of similar quality and value to your menu, its common courtesy. Overall if I was just rating the food it would be 3.5 stars, but with the lack of service and switching out to cheaper wines it left a bitter taste and overall left us feeling disappointed."

"Second time dining at Lucky Bee in Ettalong. First time was okay but had a few menu items unavailable and didn’t want to review after one visit. Second time around, pretty disappointed in both the food offerings and the deceptive drink menu. Ordered pork and prawn shumai, they were nice tasting but nothing a Woolworths frozen section can’t beat. The crispy chicken wings were okay, again not a stand out and no garnishing as you would expect for a place like this. Our original order of the Thai “Lon” prawns was unavailable… chose The “Singapore” chilli prawns which consisted of 9 nicely cooked prawns and rice. Nothing amazing. Sweet chilli sauce tipped on a stir fry of prawns. Again, nothing you can’t get at surrounding restaurants. And definitely nothing Singaporean. What really annoyed me was the wine. Ordered the bottle of Burklin Wolf Dry Riesling ($68), which I have had before and liked which was promptly poured into our glasses and away we drank. Something tasted different and upon checking the bottle realised it was a bottle of Tolley Riesling. Oh well I thought, wine was okay enough. Curiosity got the better of me at home and I found you can get this bottle for $10 at most bottle shops! What a rort! Great boutique wines here! If this is what modern south-east Asian dining is, I’ll stick to the good old fashioned Thai we have on the coast and go to Sydney for a better experience for both food and drink. And another mention would be to stagger the orders because otherwise you’ll get all dishes at once and struggle to get to them before they go cold."

"Great food. A little pricey but good none the less. Sichuan Snapper was great as was the beef cheek curry."