First Look: One of China’s Fastest-Growing Dessert Chains Lands in Sydney
Words by Howard Chen · Published on 13 Aug 2026
It’s 12.45pm and a 20-deep queue has already formed on Chinatown’s Goulburn Street, 15 minutes before Makkee Dessert opens. Mandarin ripples through the line as Sydneysiders wait for a taste of the latest Chinese chain to land in Australia. Following the likes of Auntea Jenny, Molly Tea and Mixue, Makkee puts an updated spin on tong sui, a sweet Chinese soup traditionally served as dessert.
“We still focus on traditional Chinese sweet soups, but present them in a fresher, more modern way,” says owner of the Australian outpost Sofia Tang.
That’s immediately apparent inside the snug 40-seat space, where there’s more buzz than you’d expect from a dessert parlour. Unlike traditional sweet soups, the menu here can be served warm or chilled, with fresh milk added to balance the flavours. There are three series: Fresh Dessert, Ice Cream Snow and Rich Milk Tea. But the real draw is the bestselling pair of signatures: the Makkee Deluxe and Cassava Deluxe.
The Makkee bowl comes with chewy taro balls, tender red beans, peach gum (the natural resin of peach trees), soft-crunch lotus seeds and silky grass jelly, while the Cassava Deluxe swaps the jelly for slow-cooked cassava. Many of Makkee’s ingredients arrive dried from China, ready to be soaked for 24 hours then pressure-cooked to coax out their distinctive textures. This is especially true of the peach gum, which is prized in Chinese food culture. It’s traditionally associated with skin health, and Tang mentions its purported beauty benefits. This writer is less convinced by this than its delightfully bouncy texture.
A small pitcher of full-cream A2 milk arrives alongside your bowl, so you can add as much as you like. We recommend using at least half – the result hits the highest compliment you can give an Asian dessert: not too sweet.
If you prefer a sweeter, more floral finish, order the serve with golden osmanthus, taro paste and mochi. It comes with a scoop of black sticky rice, creamy taro paste, a gloopy free-form serve of rice mochi and taro balls filled with taro paste. Plus, a dainty finish of osmanthus petals.
The Ice Cream Snow section pairs locally made ice-cream with that same black sticky rice, taro paste and frozen durian – all of it served over fluffy shaved ice. When it comes to the milk teas, the oriental jasmine delivers a fragrant hit, while the taro paste and mochi number doubles down on texture. Both can be ordered at different sweetness levels.
Makkee traces back to 2021, when founder Xu Kang opened the first store in Huzhou, Zhejiang province. The point of difference was using milk to “soften” the more distinct flavours – wood ear mushrooms, jujubes, mung beans and black sesame – present in traditional sweet soups regionally.
By early 2025, the brand had 53 stores in China. But that grew even further when an investor and franchise operator came on board. Within a year, Makkee had exploded past 1000 stores across China, making it the country’s largest Chinese dessert-soup chain by store count.
Tang is betting that Makkee’s popularity will translate in Sydney, bringing a big player in Chinese dessert culture to a wider audience and becoming part of the city’s broader dessert conversation.
Makkee Dessert
1/22-26 Goulburn Street, Sydney
Hours:
Tue to Sun 1pm–10pm
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