Lazy Su rocking the suburbs with home delivery

The star of the starters was the pork bao. Photo: Supplied.

Lonsdale street favourite Lazy Su is taking their fusion of Japanese, Korean and American influenced flavours, food and drink ‘on tour’ through Canberra suburbs.

Since the COVID-19 restrictions hit the hospitality industry, the team at Lazy Su decided to put their own unique spin on home delivery. Since they are not set up for the full logistics of delivering all over Canberra seven days a week, they are sharing the love and delivering to a different area once a week for six weeks. So far, it has been working a treat.

With three ‘tour’ dates down, Lazy Su Co-Owner Jared Calnan says “the response has been amazing, totally unexpected”.

“We sold out our allocation for both Woden and Belconnen and have had a lot of enquiries about the next suburbs,” Jared explained.

“As far as expanding, we are just running this tour for the time being and will assess its success towards the end to see, firstly, how we are placed with COVID restrictions and, secondly, whether we are opening the restaurant to dining back up by then or not.”

It’s a conundrum being faced across the hospitality sector.

“We have actually quite enjoyed running takeaway only and doing the different delivery dates in Belconnen and Woden. It’s a big change for us but it has been fun. Seeing a customer smile when we drop off their food makes it all worth it.” said Jared.

Despite the loosening of lockdown restrictions, Lazy Su won’t be opening to dine-in customers just yet.

“It’s actually much more difficult for us to operate with a 10-person cap than it is to remain takeaway only, so we plan to remain takeaway-only at this stage until probably at least step 3. We may run special dining events but won’t be opening fully for a little while at this stage.”

So how does it work?

Delivery happens on select Wednesdays with pre-orders from 5:00 pm the Thursday of the week before — online orders for Wednesday 27 May Weston Creek/Molonglo Valley delivery run have been available from 5:00 pm, Thursday, 21 May.

It is all online, with the menu split between options of a set dinner menu for two along with ‘small & snack’ plates, ‘vegetables & rice’ and ‘bigger stuff’. The drinks options include wine, beer, cider, soju and fun custom-blended cocktails like ‘Poppin’ Pimm’s’, a fruity concoction of Pimm’s No1, strawberry liqueur, strawberry and pineapple tea, mint, pomegranate and poppin’ pearls.

After seeing photos on Instagram of happy customers receiving their orders in Belconnen on the first leg of the tour, I quickly headed to the Lazy Su website to check the tour date for my area.

As luck would have it, Woden, my neighbourhood, was next on the list. Not wanting to miss out, I placed my pre-order straight away, opting for the regular dinner for two.

Not having ever eaten at the restaurant itself, the set menu on offer sounded like a great opportunity to try a variety of restaurant favourites like Edamame, two Pork Bao, two Wagyu Cheesesteak spring rolls, Chicken Gyoza, Kimchi Fried Rice and Crispy Smashed Chicken.

On the night of the delivery, I received a text message that the order was coming and was able to track the drivers’ progress as dinner made its way to me. The food is designed to be shared and without fanfare, and because it smelt so good and we were eager to tuck in, we laid out the takeaway containers as we noshed on the Edamame.

The star of the starters was the Pork Bao, with perfectly fluffy bao, melt in your mouth soy-braised pork belly accompanied by the freshness of a herb salad, pickled cucumber with fresh chilli and hoisin sauce. The mains both had a subtle heat that intensified as we ate it.

The perfectly cooked Crispy Smashed Chicken heat snuck up on us as we got more of the fresh sambal and ginger sauce at the bottom of the container while the Kimchi Fried Rice surprised with its texture and addition of gochujang, a Korean red chilli paste.

The flavours all travelled really well, but as expected given the 20-minute drive, the food wasn’t piping hot when it arrived and on reflection, we could have popped it in the microwave for 60 seconds to warm it up. If they extend the tour and come back to deliver again in Woden, I certainly wouldn’t have any hesitation reordering. Next time I’ll order double, enough for leftovers for the next day.