Golden Century BBQ opens in Darling Square, Sydney - Restaurants

Jan 23, 2023

Tuck into crispy roast duck, BBQ pork and dim sum, with their legendary XO sauce on the side.

Good news for Golden Century devotees. The Sydney stalwart has opened a new BBQ restaurant in Darling Square which serves up classic Cantonese dishes to dine in and take away.

The new venue won’t serve the live seafood that Golden Century is famous for – including the cult-famous XO pipis – but you can always pop next door to XOPP for your shellfish hit.

Golden Century BBQ offers a concise menu of the heavy hitters; roast duck, bbq pork, roasted pork belly and soy chicken. You can have the meat by itself or order it with rice, vermicelli noodles in soup or dry noodles. Dim sum, such as har gow and siu mai, and XO sauce are available as sides. A whole roast duck will set you back $48, a standard serve of BBQ pork is $20 and a bowl of meat with rice or noodles spans $19-$24.

Billy Wong is amazed at the response, seeing as the venue is only a week old and opened with little fanfare. But then he underestimated the nostalgic appeal of the Golden Century brand.

Golden Century BBQ. Source: Supplied

“It’s wonderful to get the support from customers who have been dining with us for 30 years, especially as this is a new concept that’s fast and casual,” he says. “It’s simple, authentic Cantonese comfort food – flavours people are very familiar with.”

“The XO sauce has been our signature for many years, we included it on the menu because it goes really well mixed through the dry noodles and is a perfect match for BBQ. In Hong Kong BBQ-style restaurants they have a lot of condiments on offer, one of them is chilli sauce, so instead of using chilli we use XO.”

The venue sits under XOPP, making it easy for customers who dine at the restaurant to pop down and take the barbecued meats home. “We felt that Darling Square has a good mix of customers. It’s a bustling area, you’ve got people that live there, people that visit and there’s a good mix of operators. It’s a beautiful space with a great vibe,” Wong says.

Golden Century 2

The original Golden Century on Sussex Street closed during lockdown in 2021. Will it come back? Watch this space. “A lot of people are asking us about that. When the lease ended, we reassigned the chef and a lot of the staff to existing venues, The Century and XOPP, and both these restaurants offer the original menus,” he says.

“They’re open until 11am on Fridays and Saturdays rather than 4am, but we’re considering where to next and looking at potentially new venues for Golden Century.”

Golden Century BBQ
Wed-Mon 11am-8pm
Exchange Building, Darling Square
Goldencentury.com.au