Evergreen Restaurant

This is unashamedly my favourite place on Gouger. Why? Well, I like how it’s tucked away in Moonta St alley, I like that it looks and feels nicer than most other Asian restaurants along the street, and I love its food. Simple.
We go here regularly, but still haven’t managed to try everything on the menu. That’s because a. it’s enormous and b. we keep going back for favourites.
On Friday nights, their salt and pepper crab is on special — ooooh yeah, that’s when you’ll find me there! This is one of my favourite dishes ever. The soft shelled crab are lightly battered and fried, so the batter and the is crispy and delicious, but not too thick to stop you from the juicy crab inside. Oh, just so juicy.
And they do a great BBC: Broad Bean, Bean Curd and Chutney salad. Fresh, lightly cooked crunchy beans, tasty chucks of bean curd then lots of chutney flavour. Very fresh and goes down well with something fried and meaty.
Also, I love their crispy skin duck. Half a duck is around $ 14 (expensive compare to most normal dishes here) and is delicious. It is sometimes a little floury, but mostly its great. You have to eat it quickly though, because when it cools it’s not so great.
Evergreen has two daily specials, so no matter when you go there they’ll have a cheap dish ($ 6-​$ 10, depending on the price of the original), and there are plenty of popular dishes on this list. It’s a great way to try a range of their food, just by ordering the special on whatever night you’re there.
It does get busy at peak hours, but they’re open quite late, so we mostly go there sometime after 9pm, and by then it’s quiet and the food comes quickly. A great way to either end or start a night.

Before Evergreen Restaurant was setup there was another restaurant in its place. I thought it was a brilliant place to eat and I went there frequently. I was positively heartbroken when the restaurant closed. The store was vacant for a while before Evergreen was setup in its place.
Have you noticed that I haven’t mentioned the name of the old restaurant yet? There’s a good reason for that. Evergreen is so much better that I’ve all but forgotten the old place!
It looks like a little pokey restaurant at the front, but like the TARDIS it’s bigger on the inside. The décor is nice, and the specials are written in both Chinese and English. You’d be surprised at how many restaurants don’t actually do that. It makes you feel like you’re missing out on something.
The food is great, it’s standard Chinatown fare which they put their own unique stamp on. I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m saying it’s mediocre, not at all! It’s one my favourite stops when I visit the Central Market and I strongly recommend it.

When this place first opened a year or so ago it was easy to get a table, but now you’re probably better off booking. Evergreen has a huge menu with loads of pictures — much bigger than the one I’ve dug up on the internet. This is a fun place to come with a big table of people, but isn’t bad with just two either. The service are friendly, but a little shy. The inside is just like your standard Gouger St Chinese restaurant — but a little nicer than Ying Chow or East Taste.
My favourite things to order here:
1. Sour and Chilli Shredded Potato — delicious with a bit of heat but not enough to erase all other flavours. A tangy, fresh way to load up on carbs.
2. Lotus root salad — can’t remember the exact name of this dish, but it is excellent. A very light, garlic ginger sauce over lotus root, nutty flavoured white beans and other Asian vegetables.
3. Oysters in spring onion and ginger sauce — pretty self-​explanatory. Yum.