Roast Duck Inn – Box Hill – their crispy pork is nicer

A visit to Box Hill usually entails ordering some delicious Chinese cuisine at one of the many long established restaurants like Dumpling King and the Hills. Box Hill is a suburb brimming with mainland China and Hong Kong cuisine restaurants, with popular franchises like Haidilao and Tang now having a place in this suburb alongside long established restaurants. Roast Duck Inn is not a franchise, but one of those long established restaurants in Box Hill focused on serving Hong Kong style roast meats and traditional family-style shared meals.

It’s an obvious choice to go for their roast duck and to pair it with either rice or noodles, but in my experience their roast pork is superior because it has more tender meat and crispier skin than other establishments.

For their signature dish, you can go for their roast duck on rice for $17.80 (or add $1.50 to change to noodle soup). It’s probably better with rice than noodles, as I’ll explain why further below.

The restaurant itself is cozy with lots of signage advertising dishes to try and the window face shows an array of roast meats ready to be cut up for guests to enjoy. On being seated, we were provided tea and soup. This was a pleasant welcome to the restaurant. We chowed down on the soup, which had a good mix of umami flavour along with off cut meats, soft greens and crunchy nuts.

We ordered their Two Combination Roast Meat with Noodle Soup and Roast Duck Special Fried Rice. The plate of roast meats seem meagre for the price being paid f $21.30. But we had to accept that Box Hill prices tender to be much higher than say Springvale and Glen Waverley prices. The roast duck skin was crispy, but the lack of meat on the duck left us wanting more, while the roast pork meat had tender meat and the skin was really crispy. The noodle soup had a hint of sesame flavour but otherwise was a rather bland soup with water spinach and egg noodles. I think it’s better to go with rice or even fried noodles than noodle soup. (Some Chinese restaurants do excellent soups for their noodle soups, but this soup was not tasty nor worth a second chance.)

The restaurant also has water tanks for various crustaceans, like lobster and crab and fish, for guests wanting a fresh seafood dinner. We were seated close to the tank and saw a number of catchments for various diners on a Friday night.

The menu manages to cater for guests wanting a simple one plate meal or those wanting to share plates with the table. The price range is unfortunately higher than prices in other parts of Melbourne.

The restaurant was relatively quiet around 5:00 PM but as the evening wore on, there was a trickling in of guests until the whole restaurant was full. It’s definitely a popular restaurant in the area.

The service was pretty good, since things were provided well before we asked for it. We even had our cups refilled with hot jasmine tea when we finished our meals. All in all, it was a good experience though the noodle soup let it down.

Please support the website by liking the article or subscribing to the mailing list. The review and the experience above are based on my own views. No commission, freebies or payments have been received.

Here are some of my recent articles:

• 
  Colombian Tojos at Dandenong Market – a stall that will grab your attention
• 
  Sloppy Joe Deli – Melbourne – sloppy joes for $14 and their famed mushroom and truffle toastie
• 
  Pa Tong Thai – Melbourne – Thai restaurant in an old pub
• 
  Cumulus – Melbourne – delicious fine dining dishes using Victorian produce
• 
  Animaga Expo 2024 – Melbourne – an anime fan festival without the big names