Golden Century

The food memories of the Wong family’s beloved Cantonese restaurant run deep. For people of all stripes, from all over Sydney, Golden Century is synonymous with XO pippies, boisterous late-night dining or a yum cha service crowded with families. The Sussex Street mainstay shuttered in 2021. And in 2025, after a long wait, the family team (Eric and Linda Wong, and their son Billy) reopened at a level-three space at Crown.

Perhaps the first thing you’ll notice is the natural light: floor-to-ceiling windows face all directions, locking in water views that bring Golden Century closer to Hong Kong’s Victoria Bay than Sydney’s Chinatown. The ordering’s à la carte, with everything cooked to order – which means no rolling trolleys. Lazy Susans are for the eight private dining rooms only. But the over-80-count dim sum menu is the longest the family’s put up.

Your table will be crowded with baskets of delicate prawn gow gee, scallop siu mai and fluffy pork buns, plus plates of braised beef tripe and stacks of crispy fried radish cake. The silky sheets of steamed rice cakes – wrapping dried shrimp and shallots, or sticky barbeque pork and egg – are drenched in house-made soy sauce. Alongside GC’s famous yum cha service, find signatures like the XO pipis (a dish Momofuku’s David Chang famously called “the best in the world”) and live lobster cooked two ways.

There’s congee and a collection of pickles, plates of salt-and-pepper squid and bright-green piles of Chinese broccoli, glossy with oyster sauce.