The best Chinese restaurants in Sydney

This little Xinjiang-style restaurant has always been popular enough for lines to snake out the door – thankfully now they have a whole lot of on-the-street seating, so you're less likely to have to wait to get a seat inside. Once seated, you're in for some seriously delicious treats, like hand-pulled noodles with lamb, and light-as-a-feather dumplings. Plus, the prices are seriously right. There are a few Xinjiang noodle houses like this in a row and dotted around Chinatown – but we're calling it, this one is The Best.

A visit to this popular Haymarket eatery is a one-way ticket to flavour town, and the best part is that you can travel there on a shoestring and not miss out on any of the fun. Must order: beef hot pot with a fiery Sichuan-spiked broth, and crunchy chilled cucumbers dressed with dried, roasted chillies, a whack of salt and enough garlic to repel Edward Cullen. So, so good.

At the Eight they push the boat just that little further – there's an extra lick of attention paid to everything on offer, from the moist, sweet, tender barbecue pork to the stout little mango pancakes. The congee is excellent – all loose and glutinous with little pieces of pork and preserved egg woven through, topped with little bits of fried bread and green onion. If you're not a Chinese nanna, you might have to arm wrestle the waitress for it, but persevere. The dumplings are generally a little smaller than the footballs you see around Sydney, and just a little more tender - namely the prawn and pork. 

For 15 years, Spice Temple has been serving some of the most delicious Chinese dishes to be found in Sydney. Headed up by executive chef Andy Evans, who has been on the pans since day dot, the subterranean CBD restaurant is renowned for putting a spotlight on China’s regional cuisines, from Sichuan to Yunnan, Hunan and Guangxi. Super hot numbers are red on the menu – so spice wusses, tread lightly. The crisp and golden lamb and cumin pancake and succulent white-cut chicken with ‘strange flavour dressing’ are must-orders.

This Ashfield Chinese restaurant is a favourite of some of the best chefs in Sydney, so you know it's going to be legit. Work your way through provincial specialities like country-style pan fried fish cakes and steamed minced pork with salted fish before moving onto king prawns, pork rib and salt baked chicken. You'll also find huge hot pots and warming bowls of congee.

They’ll tell you to go for the Peking duck. They’ll tell you it’s a juicy bird with crisp skin and sweet meat. And they’d be right. It is. This is just one of the many roast delights at Mr Wong – a two-level Canto-extravaganza offering everything from fancy dim sum to green beans stir-fried with pork mince and house-made XO sauce. 

Beloved Sydney icon Malay Chinese has a new outpost at Circular Quay's dining precinct Sydney Place. Here, they specialise in laksa lemak, which is made from coconut milk and curry paste and devoured at hawker stalls in Malaysia and Singapore. There are 11 types to choose from, ranging from chicken to beef and prawn. Other notable mentions go to the comforting Hainan chicken with nourishing broth, and char kway teow with its slippery, fat rice noodles and trademark smoky notes. Malay Chinese is a mostly takeaway affair, so get down here early. Also: don't wear white.

Breathe a sigh of relief: the pippies in XO sauce at XOPP are just as good as they are at the dearly departed Golden Century. And that’s a damn good thing, because it would be pretty awkward if the dish that inspired the awkwardly named (say it slowly, one letter at a time) and eagerly anticipated spinoff of the Chinatown institution were not up to scratch. Look beyond those pippies, however, and the comparisons to its closed sister venue are few and far between. Up here, in the strangely semicircular space on the first floor of Kengo Kuma’s cyclonic Exchange building, there’s hardly a tablecloth or a fish tank in sight. XOPP not only indulges that unending romance with those tried-and-true Cantonese classics, but also gives us a few new reasons to fall in love all over again. 

Xi An Cuisine doesn't have a website, though you can find the hole-in-the-wall on 90 Hay Street Haymarket – and you absolutely should. This place is as cheap and cheerful as it gets, and most plates cost around $13. Must try: the fatty pork "Chinese burger" (its actual name is rou jia mo) with lashings of chilli oil.

Come for Cantonese hits and a fun time at the OG Queen Chow Enmore, found in the Queens Hotel. All of your favourite dishes are there – including plump and juicy dumplings, glistening crisp duck; fragrant market fish with ginger shallot and white soy; and king prawns with garlic butter and enoki and wood ear mushrooms. Feel like being a baller? Go for lobster with your choice of sauce from XO, black bean and chilli, garlic butter, ginger shallot or salt and pepper. On weekends, there’s yum cha during the day, and a DJ plays non-stop bangers at night.

Did you and your family visit your local Chinese restaurant when you were growing up and have your order down pat? Things like plump, glistening honey king prawns, beef and black bean with its deep, umami flavour, and special fried rice with fluffy grains, canary-yellow eggs, and peas? Ours certainly did. If you're the same, a visit to The Lucky Prawn—a Chinese-Australian bistro housed in Marrickville's wonderful Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre—will feel like a nostalgic treat. Helmed by former Cho Cho San and CicciaBella chef Nic Wong, The Lucky Prawn is an ode to the Chinese-Australian diners dotted all over the country. And while not strictly authentic, this cheerful red and gold restaurant delivers on comfort and deliciousness in spades. Add a couple of Hawke's ripping beers, and you'll be laughing. (The prawn toast is a must-order.)

It was a sad day when Sydney institution Golden Century closed its doors, but thankfully, The Royal Palace Seafood Restaurant filled the dumpling-shaped hole in our hearts (and took over the site). The sprawling 600-seat Cantonese diner offers traditional yum cha, live seafood, and late-night dining. There are a lot of excellent offerings in Sydney’s Chinatown, making it a competitive space, but Royal Palace delivers on flavour, nostalgia, and the theatre of being able to choose your own fresh seafood.

Holding court in the red and gold dining room of the Palace Chinese Restaurant comes with great responsibility. If you are in the power seat by the trolley channel you need to be decisive when the extra-juicy pink-hued roast pork rolls around, served in thin slices with the right fat-to-meat ratio. Move quickly when the blistered greens beans come out of the kitchen, scalding hot, salted like the sea and dressed in garlic.  It’s worth checking every basket, because in addition to taut-skinned, tightly packed prawn and garlic chive dumplings there might be a sneaky serve of duck dumplings on the trolley. 

They do things differently at Spice World, Haymarket’s very own truly quirky and ultimately delicious eating experience. The first Australian outpost for one of China’s biggest hot pot chains peddles Barbies draped in beef; a giant soup-based stock cube fashioned into the shape of a Hello Kitty; robots that glide around the venue serving up digital smiles and mints; and there’s also a sauce banquet. 

Luxe, elegant and a little bit special, pearls are the ocean’s jewel. Pearl is also the name of the elevated CBD Cantonese restaurant by the Lotus Dining Group (Lotus the Galeries, Lotus Barangaroo, Lotus Double Bay). And just like the ocean's shiny lustrous sphere, it's pretty special, too. Located in the Quay Quarter on Bridge and Young Streets, the 84-seat restaurant and bar serves modern takes on the cuisine from China’s Canton province, with influences from Hong Kong, where chef and director of culinary Cheung Shui Yip is from.

This Woolloomooloo finger wharf hot spot is the go-to for ladies' long lunches, water views and shareable pan-Asian cuisine. Book a big table and order up a bunch of dishes that trot through Beijing (Peking duck pancakes), Bali (cobia yellow curry), Bangkok (crisp pork belly with chilli caramel and prik nam pla) and Sydney (salt and pepper king prawns with toasted chilli and garlic). The three banquet menu options are great for groups and the wharf location lends itself to a glam pre-lunch party snap.

The Liverpool Road stretch of Ashfield is littered with dumpling houses these days but Shanghai Night was arguably the first. Back then, staff would make dumplings at one of the back tables in the dining room; now they’re stationed within a modern glassed-in kitchen with fancy laminated menus to boot. They’re still serving up some of Sydney’s cheapest xiao long bao soup dumplings. But wait. There’s more. Steamed and fried dumplings arrive in hearty portions of 12 for the small serve, 18 for a large. 

Jin Weigu in Campsie is doing powerhouse breakfasts, Northern Chinese-style. Here, as in Beijing or Tianjin, the only way to start the day is with a meal that’s hot, hearty, thick, and filling – the kind of food that’s sustained populations through thousands of years of bitter winters and a hardy history. The menu board and heat-lamped display offer an overwhelming variety of AM staples from the mainland, comprising everything from crunchy crullers (deep-fried cakes) dipped into freshly ground soy milk and paper-plain millet porridge, to robust lamb bone stews, and buns filled with sweet red bean.