For anyone into hot pot, live seafood and lacquered pigeons, Beverly Hills should hold the same gravitational pull of Leichhardt’s Norton Street to spaghetti fanciers in the 1970s. It’s impossible to name a best Cantonese restaurant in the south-west suburb, but this is certainly one of our favourites.

Owner Anthony Kwok’s hospitality is some of warmest you will ever encounter, there are live lobsters the size of Tonka trucks, and tank-to-wok pipis come with a deep XO that soaks into crisp-fried vermicelli noodles. What more do you need, really?

Opened by Kwok and his wife in the 1990s, the tiny dining room is decorated with neon signage, a framed Peanuts jigsaw puzzle, good-luck trinkets and a pair of grumpy barramundi in a tank, ready for their close-up steamed with ginger and shallots.

There are more than one hundred dishes to choose from, though, including a homespun chicken soup with collagen-rich fish maw; free-range chicken spangled with sesame seeds across its mustard-yellow skin; and batons of eggplant steamed in a tonne of garlic, and covered with soy sauce and chewy matchsticks of lap cheong sausage.

There’s no right or wrong way to order at Beverly Hills Chinese, only the wrong tunnel exit if coming from the city.

Must order: Anything with salted egg yolk, Kwok’s speciality, such as a ferocious amount of fried rice topped with meaty, orange nubs of the stuff.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.