From live seafood to free biang biang noodle refills, these Sydney restaurants are worth celebrating year-round, but especially during Lunar New Year.
Anyone who tells you they don’t like Chinese food, probably hasn’t eaten a lot of Chinese dishes. The cuisine dwarfs all others in this depth, diversity and ingenuity, and it’s been terrific to watch Sydney emerge from its honey prawn era, and into a city where Sichuan restaurants increasingly share the same block as sprawling Cantonese dining rooms, Chongqing noodle shops and Xinjiang skewer joints.
The following list is barely a snapshot of the breadth and depth of Chinese restaurants in Sydney, and there are many more collected in the Good Food app that we haven’t been able to squeeze in here. But hopefully it can provide some inspiration for booking a Lunar New Year banquet over the coming weeks.
Grandfathers, CBD
Is there a Chinese restaurant in the history of Sydney that has installed so many fish tanks and stocked none of them with live seafood? The live tanks here are tucked away in the kitchen of this basement restaurant from Dan Pepperell, Mikey Clift and Andy Tyson (Pellegrino 2000, Clam Bar), while the dining room is flush with tropical aquarium fish. It’s not the only striking thing about the place. Preserved cabbage in chilli paste and black fungus pickled in black vinegar hum with flavour, while pigeon braised in master stock and fried until golden is plated to season with five-spice salt. Immersive, impressive and an instant hit.
Angel Place, Sydney, grandfathers.com
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Lee Ho Fook, CBD
When it first opened in Melbourne in 2013, Lee Ho Fook was quietly revolutionary. A young Chinese-Australian chef, Victor Liong, took the food of his heritage, brought in threads from his career in Sydney fine diners and created something refreshing and new. Liong finally came to Sydney in September, with a tasting menu and one of the most levelled-up prawn toast renditions around. It’s a place to pique curiosity, taste familiar dishes anew, to go haute or to simply sink into the comfort of XO-scented Fujian fried rice drowned in swimmer crab gravy, then double down with live seafood.
203 Castlereagh Street, Sydney, porterhouseprecinct.com.au
Grape Garden, Potts Point
Ecca Zhang, who runs the floor, is one reason to return to this family-owned restaurant in Kings Cross – his exuberance, warmth and knowledge cut through the urban noise. The food is the other reason. Ecca’s parents, Beijing expats Gao Lun and Jie Zhang, hand-pull noodles and serve them dan dan-style with minced pork and a heady, brothy sauce, then expertly boil or pan-fry delicate dumplings destined to be splashed with sharp house-made vinegar and fragrant Sichuan pepper-spiked chilli oil.
Shop 3, 2/14 Bayswater Road, Potts Point, grapegardenbeijingcuisine.com
Yan, Wolli Creek
Situated on the ground floor of a high-density apartment block, Yan probably doesn’t attract many people visiting Wolli Creek for a Sunday stroll. It does attract a lot of locals though, who know damn-good cooking when they taste it. Yan means “smoke” in Mandarin, and chef Ewa Goralewski leans into the theme, dishing up smoked prawns with feature-length flavour or sliced beef short-rib layered over just-sauteed kale. Dark walnut chairs and dulcet light make the dining room feel much cosier than the building it inhabits, as does the hospitality from owner Narada Kudinar.
G03/19 Arncliffe Street, Wolli Creek, yanrestaurant.com.au
Golden Sands, Hurstville
A local institution tucked upstairs in Hurstville Times Plaza, Golden Sands is the undisputed king of yum cha in the suburb, especially after the closure of Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant in 2021. Steamed pork ribs and siu mai hit the mark, and golden-skinned roast goose – exceptionally juicy and sweet-tasting – is a staple of the premium yum cha banquet, available for groups.
Hurstville Times Plaza, 127-141 Forest Road, Hurstville, goldensandshurstville.com.au
Taste of Shunde, Hurstville
Shunde is known as Bruce Lee’s ancestral home, but this district of Foshan, in the heart of the Pearl River Delta, is renowned for something more: its food. Taste of Shunde in Hurstville is a chance to experience the greatest hits. The seafood is exceptional: fish cakes with impressive lightness; green chillies stuffed with minced freshwater dace and fried until sweet. And then there’s the bamboo platter, an epic life-long memory built around a whole steamed fish and sheet noodles, doused in fragrant sauces and topped with pipis and prawns.
9-11 Crofts Avenue, Hurstville; also at Shop 15 A5, A7/1 Lakeside Road, Eastwood; tasteofshunde.com
Royal Palace, Haymarket
Ordering the delicacies of the sea is a given here – there’s a wall of tanks filled with coral trout, snow crabs, rock lobster and more – but the char siu pork is also worthy of your attention. Its cooked until juicy, served with a sticky honey glaze and nestled over fragrant peanuts. Add wok-fried fioretto cauliflower with crisped garlic and dried black beans, free-range chicken, lacquered duck, roast pigeon and late-night congee. Your choices are only limited by the size of your group and wallet.
393-399 Sussex Street, Haymarket, royalpalace.au
Golden Century, Barangaroo
The Chinatown institution which romanced Sydneysiders for three decades with XO pipis, roast pigeon, claypot beef and live seafood lives again. Four years after calling time on Sussex Street, Golden Century owners Eric and Linda Wong, with son Billy, are now serving Cantonese at Crown and it’s a very different vibe to the original. A sparkling, plush fitout? Floor-to-ceiling windows? New tanks? If little of the original Golden Century remains, is it still Golden Century? Well, yes. The menu still offers all those primo fish, fat crabs and pipis cooked with top-level technique, and the yum cha is among the best in the city.
Crown Sydney, Level 3/1 Barangaroo Avenue, Barangaroo, crownsydney.com.au
Traditional Cantonese Taste, Eastwood
Dive deep into Eastwood Village Square and there’s so much to appreciate: handmade tofu, the epic seafood platters at Taste of Shunde (see above), the school prawns and live seafood at the fishmongers. But for cheung fun, the slippery Cantonese rice noodle roll, made fresh to order? It has to be Traditional Cantonese Taste. Rice noodles are steamed in a sheet, folded around fillings – prawn and scallop, say, or chicken and cordyceps flower – then served under a sweet soy sauce that soaks into all the crevices. Don’t sleep on the congee either, which is even more comforting.
Suite 14/1 Lakeside Road, Eastwood
My Aunt’s Handmade Noodles, Burwood
Soup noodles, dry noodles, fried noodles, rice noodles, you name it, they probably have it. Plus, there’s free noodle refills if the portions aren’t large enough. Start with the cumin lamb ribs, deceptively tender, then follow with the signature biang biang noodles. Ample vegan options add to the welcoming tone. Come early or brave the queues – either way you’ll leave happy.
226 Burwood Road, Burwood, myauntsgroup.com.au
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Callan Boys is Good Food’s national eating out and restaurant editor.Connect via X or email.
