Golden Dragon Palace in Templestowe restaurant review

June 17, 2025
12:34 am

Dim sum is as entrenched in the local DNA as a love of footy, and Golden Dragon Palace kicks plenty of goals.

14/20

Cantonese$$

I have this romcom idea – stick with me here – that starts with a meet-cute between two strangers vying for the last steamer basket of har gow from the yum cha trolley. Hostile glares turn into loaded glances. Mutual recognition of dumpling appreciation becomes the sturdy foundation for a couple to navigate life’s ups and downs. Fireworks.

Golden Dragon Palace is a worthy venue for such a scene. The coronated king of the yum cha belt stretching through Templestowe and Doncaster is well known to Melbourne’s committed tribe of yum cha lovers. After sending out its first steamer basket in 2002, it has proven immune to the restaurant blind spot that develops in the general population after seven years. Its immutable unfashionability is anchored to its location – my kids know it as “that place next to Red Rooster” – and the fact that yum cha is as entrenched in the Melbourne DNA as a love of footy.

The whole yum cha experience can be triggering for anyone with a scarcity mindset. Like the breakfast buffet, it conjures all sorts of odd behaviours, but just try to refrain from grabbing the mango custard at the start of the meal in case it’s not seen again.

Nine trolleys circle Golden Dragon Palace’s 200-seat room on weekends (there are five on weekdays), creating an odd rhythm of scarcity and plenitude. Hold your nerve and be rewarded with dim sum that can be simply outstanding.

“Ethereally translucent” prawn and chive dumplings.Joe Armao

It’s the sort most people would be able to identify in a line-up – ethereally translucent prawn and chive numbers, rich and giving scallop siu mai – all beautifully pleated with snappy, fragrant fillings and thin, pliable wrappers steamed into lilting softness rather than gummy industrial glue.

Hit the oily, caramelised turnip cakes and those slippery, sweet soy sauce rice-noodle rolls (cheung fun) filled with barbecue pork. Deliciously jammy char siu pork comes in a cakey bun with a crisp give on the first bite.

Minced prawn balls with slippery ribbons of bean curd are another standout – the reduced chicken broth sauce is worth slurping from the bottom of the bowl – nor should you miss the wu gok (taro puffs). Their taro casing fluffs up in the fryer into tendrils of tickling crunch that give ASMR shivers; the innards are a liver-coloured glue of chicken and mushrooms with a vivid dried shrimp funk.

Wu gok (taro puffs).Joe Armao

Baked items play a strong game here, too. The golden barbecue pork puffs under a shiny wash of lamination like 1970s rec-room furniture; the so-rich-so-good egg custard tarts that have done outreach for Hong Kong-chapter Chinese cuisine since early last century.

Golden Dragon Palace is a place drenched in good fortune. The cavernous room, ornate with recessed ceilings and chandeliers and filigree screens, is filled with enough carvings of laughing buddhas, fiery dragons, galloping horses and golden carp to bring eternal blessings to the Greater Templestowe area.

Golden Dragon Palace’s ornate dining room.Joe Armao

Make your own luck by avoiding the fried items (whitebait, calamari), which can peak long before they reach your table. The baked scallop shells have also lost the fight against time; I’m not convinced, anyway, that the bacon, mushroom and cheese combo belongs in this exalted company. We yum cha, we learn.

By night, the a la carte menu is a heavy tome listing endless things that can be done to king prawns and other big-ticket items. The wine list plays along with a preference for big benchmark reds topping out its encyclopaedic Aussie-French selection. By day, it’s the rare table cracking a bottle or a beer. Tea is where it’s at, and the military-grade staff don’t let a pot sit empty for more than 10 seconds. Impressive.

“The yum cha experience conjures all sorts of odd behaviours. Hold your nerve and be rewarded.”

Readers of these pages will know regional Chinese food is finally receiving its dues. Fire, funk and mystery abound. It might seem retrograde to turn back to the polite Cantonese pomp of classic dim sum but my last meal on earth, if I could choose, would involve dumplings, a lazy susan and loved ones. And it may well be at Golden Dragon Palace, which has a gravitational pull that lures my car down the Eastern Freeway several times a year.

Deposited back in the multi-lane reality of Manningham Road, it’s cinematic only if you tilt your head and squint a little. But it’s always an affair to remember, and the credits are rolling.