From Shaanxi to skewers: The best spots to try regional Chinese food in Sydney

In Sydney’s Chinatown – the spiritual home of Chinese Australians for more than a century – the boom of Chinese international students living and studying nearby has meant a revolution in the style of restaurants catering to their tastes and budgets. Dining habits have changed, and larger Cantonese banquet-style meals are giving ground to quicker, cheaper one-dish meals. This has meant that restaurants are adapting by opting for smaller menus and less labour-intensive operations to keep costs and prices down.

There has been a string of closures from those unable to keep their prices down: Sydney has lost nearly 50 Chinese food venues in the past 20 months, according to Wayne Tseng, the president of the Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce. The list of closures includes Chatswood’s King Dynasty, Chao Kong Chinese Restaurant in Eastwood and Chan’s Canton Village, which opened in 1980 at Casula. Numerous high-profile restaurants have also closed, among them Redfern’s Good Food Guide -hatted Redbird , Crown’s elevated Silks and Lotus, which pivoted its Double Bay location to takeaway only .



But new businesses are rising in their place. Nowadays in Chinatown, you’ll smell the wafting scent of cumin-dusted, deep-fried skewers when you walk down Dixon Street. The precinct now includes six food stalls serving Chinese-style skewers, and counting.

Diners can order a la carte from a menu of skewers including lamb, pork and chicken, as well as more adventurous proteins such as chicken hearts and duck tongue. It’s quick, cheap and delicious, and crowds gather in Chinatown well into the night. Skewers are just one of the emerging Chinese dishes that have popped up all over the city.

Now, you can find restaurants serving food from nearly every part of China, including the provinces of Fujian, Shaanxi and Hunan, as well as the growing popularity of hand-pulled Lanzhou beef noodles, which are usually halal-certified. Here is our guide to the rise of regional Chinese food in Sydney. Cantonese Cantonese food in Australia is centred on cuisine from Guangdong and Hong Kong.

Dishes are usually well-balanced and less greasy, with spices used sparingly. Going for yum cha (“drink tea” in Cantonese) is an Australian tradition, with staples including prawn dumplings, char siu baos and mango pancakes. Larger, banquet-style restaurants can be found all over Sydney, but smaller specialty yum cha shops (some takeaway only) carrying a smaller menu of items, including cheung fun (rice noodle rolls) have cropped up in the suburbs.

Skewers Now a staple on Instagram and TikTok, Chinese-style skewers, usually deep-fried or grilled, are having their moment. Broadly known as shaokao (barbecue in Mandarin), diners can choose from a range of proteins and vegetables before they’re dusted in cumin, five spice and chilli powder seasoning. Shaanxi Biang biang noodles – also known as belt noodles – are now found all over Sydney.

Shaanxi cuisine is heavily influenced by the capital Xi’an, with heavy and strong flavours using lamb, beef, garlic, onion and Sichuan peppercorn. Must-try dishes include roujiamo – braised pork belly stuffed inside a small pita-like bun – and guokui, a flatbread that has a thin and crispy texture. Fujian Fujian’s cuisine emphasises seafood including fish and shellfish, as well as mushrooms and bamboo shoots that are found in the surrounding mountain ranges.

Prominent dishes include oyster omelette, five-spice meat rolls, fish balls with pork mince filling and the “Buddha jumps over the wall” soup. Hunan While Sichuan cuisine is known for its numbing spiciness (ma la), food from Hunan province packs more of a spicy punch, with bold flavours and common cooking techniques including frying, braising and smoking. Try the fried chicken with Sichuan sauce (great with a Tsingtao beer) and Chairman Mao’s red-braised pork.

Gansu Unique in Chinese cuisine, food from Gansu province is slanted towards lamb and beef as it was historically close to the Silk Road, taking on a mix of Islamic, Arabic and Chinese influences. Lanzhou beef noodles are arguably the region’s most famous dish. They are hand-pulled noodles served in a beef broth, and often halal-certified too.

Tianjin Located about an hour from Beijing, Tianjin is often referred to as the street food capital of northern China. Its cuisine is famously carb-heavy: think pork buns, jianbing (China’s breakfast crepe) and fried dough sticks. Chinatown is back, but not as you remember it (and here are five new spots to try) Breakfast noodles to all-hours banh mi: The Good Food guide to Sydney’s Vietnamese heartland Nearly 50 Chinese restaurant closures forces change by next generation.