makan by chef tan, neutral bay

Makan by Chef Tan is an incredibly convenient place for us to have dinner as it’s only walking distance from our place. It’s located in Neutral Bay village, at the top floor of The Grove. And they have a vegan menu.

We have made several attempts to go there but they were closed. They are actually closed on Sundays which is odd for a restaurant but that is only the first sign of less professionalism.

Chef Tan has over 50 years of experience as the website says and was featured in Food Safari as well. The food is Malaysian and they have a vegan menu using mock meats. That was the reason we were interested in going to Makan in the first place. Also, one of VegFusion Facebook page followers who lives in the area recommended it. However, Makan did not deliver, at all.

Makan is a family run restaurant with all the family members waiting on the tables, wearing casual clothes like t-shirts and sneakers. The tables are not set up; you sit down and they bring everything in batches and handling your cutlery at the wrong angle and leaving fingerprints on your spoon because they can’t reach your side of the table. They bring an ice bucket to the table with not so frozen ice. It turns into a soup in 5 minutes and there is no napkin around. Every time you fill up your glass, you end up having water dribbled on your plates. Not professional at all.

Here’s what we ordered last night:

Vegan Cereal ‘Prawn’ Vegan ‘prawns’ served in batter of Nestum ceral with chilli and curry leaves

Salt & Pepper Mushroom Oyster mushroom in spicy salt and pepper mix (below)

We also wanted to order water spinach stir-fry but they didn’t have it. An okra dish was suggested but we decided to have mixed vegetable stir-fry with beancurd instead (as seen in the photo below).

And it took about an hour for all of that to be served! Some of the tables arrived after us were fed in no time but by the time our food arrived, we didn’t have much wine left in the bottle. On top of that, the food wasn’t all that good. We thought that the flavours were muted. It’s a shame because we live close by and Makan would have been another place to go and they seem like a nice family but we are not in a hurry to go back.

By the way, if you want a doggy bag (although we didn’t think it was worth taking anything home last night) there is a 50 cents surcharge for each container you use.