After hearing about the awesome snow conditions and the amazing fact that for the first time in a long while that the Mount Hutt Ski resort in New Zealand was opening earlier than scheduled, myself and some friends of mine decided to jump on the next plane to Christchurch! This was aided by the fact that Jetstar had surprisingly cheap flights there - approximately $240 bucks return including taxes! What a bargain!!

Anyways, Christchurch is a dead boring city with barely any people around the place after dark so there was painfully little to do in the evenings. On one particular evening, whilst walking around the main streets of Christchurch looking for a place for dinner, we stumbled across a Thai restaurant that had the sign out front - 'Finalist for Christchurch Restaurant of the year 2009'. Hmmmm....Finalist aye....that must mean that it's one of the better places to eat in Christchurch right?? And on that thought, we ventured in...

The decor, service and overall feel of the place certainly felt like a classy establishment-something I'd expect of a hatted restaurant in Sydney. When we arrived, there were a few people around the bar area and a few tables eating dinner already so it wasn't desserted by any means. We were seated a a long bench like table which seemed suited to communal type meal sharing arrangements, although there were normal tables else where. We sat on one end of the bench and during the course of the meal, a family took up the other end. The table and benches were large enough so that we weren't bumping elbows and it wasn't really noticable that we were sharing a table.

The prices of the dishes were pretty good with entrees ranging from $5 to $25 dollars and mains from $20+ (NZD). For the four of us, we ordered Pork Wontons for starters and 3 mains plus complimentary rice. The mains being the signature dish for Crispy Fried Chicken, Green Curry with Prawns and Wok Fried noodles.

The pork wontons were generous in size and deliciously crispy with an accompanying sweet chilli sauce. One criticism was that the pork was a tad bland and you really had to soak in some sauce to get some flavour into it.

The prawn green curry was a bit lacking in prawns (around 7 or so) but included a variety of vegetables, most noticeably eggplant. The curry itself was delicious with a nice spicy bite to it and went well with the rice.

The rice itself was a bit of a dissapointment with the grains overcooked and smushed up so that the texture resembled a stodgy mash potato than the firm, fragrant rice that it should have been.

The signature dish which we selected was the Crispy chicken which was nice if a tiny bit dry... given that it was classified as a signature dish, I was expecting a lot more, however it did not differ too much from the crispy skin chicken dishes you can get in most restaurants in Sydney.

The wok fried noodles came as a DYI dish but was quite yummy with a nice proportion of beans noodles, nuts and other ingredients. Also called Pad Thai :P

Looking through the menu, and given that we had varying budgets and tastes, we opted to order our own dishes. The majority of us ordered Dinner sets which were exceptional value given that they included a bowl of miso soup, a small bowl of udon and a side dish of sashimi. Sushi set had: Salmon Sashimi, Kingfish Sashimi, Scallop, Salmon Sushi, Eel Sushi, California rolls, Battleship sushi with salmon roe + Miso Soup + Udon + fruit.

The other dishes were both Udon. The first being Seafood Udon which looked delicious but wasn't very filling. The blue swimmer crab was also fiddly to eat. Flavours were nice though.

As expected, these udon dishes were the cheapest of the lot, however were not quite that filling. My recommendation would be to order the sets or share 2 Udon dishes in order to be full :)

As with almost every chinese restaurant, the perfect end to a great meal is the complimentary dessert and fruit selection.



Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant
9-11 Crofts Avenue
Hurstville
(02) 9585 1633
Hours: Daily, 10am-3pm, 6-11pm