Winsure Barbeque Restaurant

By Franz Scheurer

Located on the eastern end of the busy Chatswood shopping strip, near the Chase, this long and narrow restaurant specialises in barbecued meats and rude service. They’re equally good at both!

A tantalising display, so fragrant that I could smell it on the footpath (doors closed!), lured me in. First thing I noticed, everyone in here is Asian and focusing on the food. It’s very quiet apart from lots of slurping, squelching, crunching and sighing noises coming from the diners and the occasional barked order from the waitress, who ignores me. Feeling a bit like a shag on a rock and mentally ready to leave my stomach propels me forward and I try to sit down at the one free table halfway down the long room. Now I am being noticed and ushered to the very last table, halfway around the corner, hidden from view. It is clear I could give the place a bad name.

Mind says leave, stomach says stay. Stomach wins.

A menu is thrown onto my table, in both Chinese and English, and to my surprise, despite all the ‘specials’ (in Chinese) on the walls, the ‘real goodies’ are on the English menu. Ah… salted chicken, braised intestines, duck web and jelly fish, tripe four ways… I’m in heaven. When the waitress comes back I order the BBQ plate, four ways. She barks at me to choose not to tell her four ways. I see… this is about price, not about the dishes. So I select and in the shortest possible time I am sitting behind a very sizeable plater of mixed BBQ meats on a bed of steamed rice with 5 different condiments.

Ah… the aroma! Oh… the textures… Uhhh… the taste!

This is good. Actually this is superb. If only the service… As I am on the last table before the kitchen at the back, the waitress has this habit of depositing other diner’s dirty, half-eaten dishes on my table every time she gets distracted by either the baby in a pram at the table in front of me (who’s already being chopstick-fed with a few grains of rice here and there) or another patron asking for the bill. Interesting what people leave…

After tasting four dishes and the tripe for dessert I am so thoroughly at ease with the world that I start to find the service funny rather than rude and when I get the bill it’s so cheap that I decide to make my life easier next time and leave a 100% tip. That should do it.

As I leave I hear an approving chatter in Mandarin between the waitress and the guy operating the BBQ at the front of the restaurant. I’ll never know if it was the size of the tip or the fact that the unwelcome honkey finally left the premises.

BUT WAIT: I’ll be back!

Score: 5/10

If you’re game:

Winsure Barbecue Restaurant

302 Victoria Ave

Chatswood

Tel.: 02 9411 2988