The Scholar Chinese Restaurant

Delicious food. Wait time was 3 hours + but otherwise brilliant service

Went today around 1pm... Was shown to a table, sat down was offered water and started looking at the menu not even 10minutes ( I was sitting facing what looked like their store rooms) One mice, two mice and on the fourth mice running from one room to another I got out of there. The table cloths and seat covers are long so who knows if there's more running around. I did let the front desk know but I hope the issue was addressed straight away!

Hi, just want to say a big thank you to the Scholar restaurant. I left my phone in the chair and people here literally tried to find me along the streets. And they found me! By the way their food is awesome, you simple must try the sweet sour pork and three cup chicken. 谢谢你们！

This place is a Canberra institution, serving a large variety of quality Chinese food. Lots of options for fresh seafood. Friendly staff.

Good food, efficient service. Had a lovely uncrowded weekday lunch here. Didn't have to wait long. Staff were very nice.

Great yum cha on the weekends. Food is fresh and is quick and plentiful.

My partner and I came here at 11:15 am Sunday morning and waited by the top of the stairs to be seated. Firstly I need to say, arrival order to the premises has absolutely no reference to seating order. If a 4-seat table becomes free they will go down their entry stair to find a 4 person group. These people could have been waiting just 3 minutes where you've been there waiting for 20 to 25 minutes. We were there for a good 20 minutes just waiting for a seat before we were eventually waved over to a seat. Firstly the food was average, nothing spectacular. My biggest gripe is that while we were waiting the kitchen was busy and a lot of trays with interesting food came out. A lot of these same food (like deep-fried chicken and barbecue pork in a sauce). NEVER came out the whole time after we were seated. We had a few trolleys of things mostly finding, dumplings or seafood dishes come out but most of what we saw come out never once appeared once we were shown a table. The next huge kick in the face was the fact that 15 minutes into our seating placement, pretty much nothing came out of the kitchen. Two trays at most if you were lucky and it seemed cleaning tables and preparing for the next rush was more important than bringing out stuff from the kitchen. Before we sat down there were trolleys and trays all over the place - absolutely consistent. When the cleaning phase started it was more (screw the current customers, we're getting ready for he next batch). After waiting we gave up and left. Won't be going back. If tidying tables up and leaving trolleys lying about is more important than bringing current customers the stuff that wasn't being brought out since the stair waiting then yep, we're done. I really wish that I had got the photo of the stairwell when we left. It was so jampacked we had to squeeze between people who were lined up both left and right with a very narrow gap in the middle to get out. Covid spacing and so forth completely out the window. That photo would've been such a huge topic for health regulation and safety.

Outstanding Yum Cha restaurant in Canberra, but service may need improvement anyway.

Extremely busy on a Sunday afternoon. Wide selection of dishes to choose from. The dumplings were over steamed and the portion sizes were a little small.

Food is great but the service is terrible. The same trolly of steamed chicken feet and tripe came past many times but getting anything else, especially fried squid, wontons or cha sui bow, was near impossible. Wait staff would just walk away when we asked for something and not come back! Or would just say "they're on the trolly". If they were on a trolly, we never saw them... Meanwhile other people seemed to be ordering from a menu but when we asked wait staff if we could order, they said no, they were the wrong person to ask. We won't be back.