Lu Dong

Tasty and cheap! Looking forward to going back for a sit down dinner. Kitchen looks spotlessly clean. Best Chinese I have come across in Edenvale.<br/

I've passed this restaurant many times before, and was pretty put-off by the dingy exterior and the not-so-safe location (Van Riebeek can get a little dodge sometimes). Even though I love my Chinese food I always thought this was another lame westernised take away joint... But I was wrong. After reading some of the reviews and being too lazy to trek to Cyrildene for my Asian-craving, we went down the road to give Lu Dong a try.<br/ <br/ The food was excellent. Authentic and so damn cheap. The service was typical, slow and a tad hard to communicate, but the owners son helped out with the English speaking folk. It seemed like a cute little family business with the father emerging from the kitchen in his chefs hat now and then to chat with the other customers, while the mother constantly came up to refill our pots of tea.<br/ <br/ • Dried Beancurd with Cucumber and Chilli Oil: very tasty. The chilli oil adds such an awesome flavour to the dish. The tofu was nice and firm and different from what I'm used to, but good nonetheless.<br/ <br/ • Lamb Flank Soup Noodles: I love my beef Flank, but I decided to try something different. The lamb was so tender and melt-in-your-mouth, and the broth had a nice flavour to it. The homemade noodles were nice and freshly made, but I found them a bit too undercooked and chewy, and there was a lot of it so I ended up leaving half of it behind. I wish there had been a few more veggies too. Definitely good to try but now I'm very keen to sample their beef flank.<br/ <br/ • Kung Pao Chicken: Wow the flavour of this dish was divine! I really enjoyed the chicken and peanut mixture and it was quite a decent-sized portion. <br/ <br/ Our meal came up to around R150 for two people including tip, and that's pretty damn cheap for such a large amount of decent and authentic food. Just don't mind the giant fridge by the entrance and the slightly dodgy exterior and interior, and it's definitely worth the sit-down for the food. This is definitely our new go-to spot when the craving hits again.

This restaurant holds a lot of memories for me! It is the first place where I met my in-laws officially and it was a magical night then. My mother in-law regularly gets takeouts from there since she loves the quality of food. This past Sunday, some friends of ours from Taiwan were visiting South Africa and since they had not had Chinese food their whole trip, we decided that Lu Dong would be the perfect place. The food was nothing short of incredible as always and the service was fantastic too. I absolutely love their dumplings, veggies and their tofu (it's similar to mapo tofu, minus the meat). It is definitely a hidden gem.

Hey hey! I've found another Chinese restaurant I really enjoy. Food is authentic and a great price. When peaking into the kitchen, it looked really clean which gets a big thumbs up. The owner did not understand me so much as I cannot speak Chinese but the order was correct and delicious. Can definitely recommend the stir fried spinach, eggs, hand torn noodles, hot and sousour soup and a tofu dish that was ordered. I think I've found another local restaurant to drop in on from time to time.

There are a lot of Chinese restaurants in the Edenvale area, and Lu Dong is our family's go to place for a number of reasons. They serve decent food, the owner is friendly and they fulfill the most important functionality of Chinese food they're cheap.<br/ <br/ The owner generally gives genuine advice about their dishes, and can offer to mix and match ingredients, I.e replace bean sprout with veggies or add extra beef. The other time we pointed out that they served us a vegetarian dish with meat in it, she immediately apologized and offered to replace the dish. It sounds normal, but having a good customer service is very rare in these small restaurants. But... I'm not sure if they speak English. They do have English menu though!<br/ <br/ A couple of my personal favorites: sizzling beef, Kung pao chicken, beef noodles, crispy prawns<br/ <br/ Bottomline: it's around the corner of my house, so yeah, definitely a regular here.<br/ <br/ Pros: cheap decent food, decent service (not sure if you don't speak mandarin though... <br/ Cons: super dodgy neighborhood, kinda dingy if you're not used to it, quite oily