Cantonese institution Golden Century lives again at Crown Sydney

March 31, 2025
7:42 pm

For devotees of the Cantonese icon, the reborn GC might feel like your parents have moved from your childhood home into flash new digs. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find yum cha with a better view.

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Cantonese$$$

When owners Eric and Linda Wong, and their son Billy, called time on Golden Century in Haymarket four years ago, fans of the legendary Cantonese restaurant grieved. So when it was announced that Golden Century would live again at Crown, holding court with Oncore by Clare Smyth, Alessandro Pavoni’s A’mare and Yoshii’s Omakase at Nobu, I had questions. Will it have the same late-night energy? How will it look? How will it feel?

Here’s a quick replay, in case you left the room between 1990 and 2021.

Pipis in XO.Edwina Pickles

This Chinatown institution romanced Sydneysiders for three decades with pipis in XO sauce, roast pigeon, claypot beef and seemingly endless tanks of live seafood. A place famous as a late-night hospitality haunt, where you might see Tetsuya Wakuda asleep over his steamed parrot fish, or Neil Perry treating his kitchen brigade to fresh Yamba prawns drowned tableside in rice wine.

It was also famous for famous people, including Rod Stewart, Lady Gaga and George Bush – a real melting pot of celebrities, third-shift workers, party-goers and families. In a city where things open and close faster than they have time to serve hot dinners, it’s the closest to something we could call a legacy.

And now? It’s a sparkling, plush fit-out of floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Sydney Harbour, gleaming tanks and a very different vibe.

For GC regulars, it’s a little like your parents moving out of your childhood home into a brand new place in an entirely different neighbourhood. The walls don’t have the same marks on them, the carpet doesn’t smell the same, you’re not sure where the toilets are now, and it feels weird to ask. (They’re upstairs to the back of the restaurant, by the way, complete with fluffy hand towels, and sympathetic mood lighting.)

Yum cha.Edwina Pickles

On entry, you’re greeted by Crown’s signature scent of lemon, lavender, oakmoss, tonka bean and sandalwood rather than the warmth and comfort of frying garlic, roast meats and spilled beer. Your table will now have panoramic harbour vistas complete with bobbing ferries rather than the (I’ll admit, slightly grim) view of green-lipped abalone trying valiantly to sucker their way out of their tanks to freedom.

The menu still offers all those primo fish, from lobster sashimi (I’ve never loved it as a concept, from the price to the still-wiggling pearlescent tail meat) to fat mudcrabs and fresh pipis, served slathered in house-made XO sauce sitting on a nest of chewy fried rice noodles. The latter remains true to complex, sweet and briny form.

Splashing out on things from the tanks is not a condition of entry. Perhaps it’ll be juicy, beautifully tender beef tenderloin in black pepper sauce. Or deep-fried puff balls of king prawn captured in a crisp shell, dressed with honey and sesame. I could pretty happily skip the gentle, soft and silken Chinese greens and mixed mushrooms (they don’t bring much to the conversation for me), though the “mixed bits” – a perfect little beer snack of fried ham nibs, peanuts, blackened onion, capsicum – are as reliable as ever, even if they are something I’d usually enjoy post-midnight.

Honey king prawns.Edwina Pickles

It’s taking time to get the mechanics right in regards to taking orders and delivering food in a timely manner, although the wine service truly is a cut above. Under the watchful eye of John Osbeisten (formerly of Ultimo Wine Centre) and his long-time friend Grant Van Every (the last sommelier to work with late wine legend Len Evans), they’ll bring the noise, whether you’re ordering white Burgundy or Tsingtao.

While there is no longer congee at 2am, you won’t find yum cha with a better view in the city. There are no trolleys here – it’s more of that grand Hong Kong hotel experience where you order off the menu. It feels slightly less fun, but also wonderfully unhurried. Dig into kerchiefs of glutinous rice noodles coated in a thin layer of house-made XO sauce, football-sized scallop and prawn siu mai, or toast covered in swathes of prawn mousse, fried to a deep golden brown. Bonus points if you dig into the wine back-catalogue while doing so.

While much of the spirit of the old Golden Century has been lost, certain elements remain. The food is pulled into sharper focus, along with the wine service. I’m doubtful it can come back as the cultural icon it once was, but perhaps that was a time best left in the history books. And if I’m proven wrong, even better.