Sunshine restaurant serves up last sizzling steak before making way for airport rail superhub

After 40 years of feeding Melburnians, the Ung family will serve their final sizzling steak on Sunday.

Their popular Sunshine restaurant, Dragon Express, will close to make way for the multibillion-dollar airport rail project. It is one of nine buildings being compulsorily acquired by the Victorian government.

The “Sunshine Superhub” – expected to be completed by 2030 – will feature two new regional platforms, new tracks, an extended concourse and a new western forecourt.

It is this forecourt that Dragon Express is making way for – a small but vital piece of a larger plan to run more than 1000 trains a day through Sunshine and, eventually, clear the tracks for a direct line to Melbourne Airport

The Ung brothers – Lim, Chay and Ly – and their cousin Kim Che have run Dragon Express on City Place beside Sunshine train station since 2012.

Their father, Keith Leng Ung, worked at a Chinatown restaurant in the 1980s, on the Little Bourke Street site where Crystal Jade eatery now stands.

Keith had worked as a chef in his native Cambodia until the family escaped Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in 1979, spending several years in a Thai refugee camp before landing in Melbourne.

The Ung brothers first opened a restaurant in Footscray, then worked at Diamond Palace in Sunshine, across the tracks from where they are now.

Dragon Express opened in 2012 and was, Lim said, “the last stop for our families”.

“We wanted to work another four or five years before retiring, but the government came and we had to go,” Lim said. “It’s important, this [land].”

Department of Transport officials said they had been in talks with the Ungs and other affected landowners since 2022. Formal notification of the compulsory acquisitions was delivered last year.

A government spokesperson said affected property owners had been “well informed, fairly compensated and treated with respect”.

But for loyal Dragon Express customers, the news came as a shock.

Farewell cards, balloons and flowers have joined mountains of prawn crackers adorning the glass display cabinet at the cash register, and the restaurant has been booked out for weeks as regulars clamour for one last taste of the steaks and ribs that have made the restaurant a local institution.

“It’s an end of an era,” said Chay’s daughter, Wendy, who is expecting the family’s first grandchild in three weeks.

“It’s very sad, but I guess they have a chance to maybe look at retiring or what they want to do next. They deserve a break.”

But Lim, who is still recognised when he walks down the main street in Sunshine, said it would be hard to say goodbye to so many familiar faces.

“We’re going to miss them a lot,” he said.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.