Sydney's newest yum cha restaurant is Garden Palace on Sussex Street in Haymarket. Expect friendly trolley ladies, classic dishes, a few surprises and that hard-to-find prawn roll wrapped in rice paper!
It's an overcast Friday when I make my way to Garden Palace to have a yum cha lunch with Laura. The rain starts falling and I'm glad I listened to Mr NQN and brought an umbrella. It also happens to be perfect weather for yum cha, to be indoors, consuming tasty treats.
Garden Palace has only been open for a couple of months since the end of September 2025. The restaurant is located on Sussex Street on the second floor of the same building of Spice World. When I reach the top of the escalator, there's a gentleman outside the door that asks me if I want a table. I had expected to queue for a table so this was a surprise.
At 12:15pm the restaurant is not particularly empty but come 1pm and 1:30pm it will fill up more. Laura arrives a few minutes later. The trolley ladies wheel over their trolleys and we quickly cover our table with steamers. It's hard to guess the prices of each steamer as they stamp the bill but medium dishes are $8.80 (we had 4), large are $10.80 (we had 5), specials are $12.80 (we had 4) and a special order is $15.80 (we had 1). Tea is $3.50 for 2 people and although there is a sign outside saying there is 10% off, this doesn't appear to be the case on our bill.
The first trolley lady comes over with the tripe, chicken's feet and large beef and fish balls. We decide to try the fish balls as we like any sort of new yum cha items. They're not bad, full of mild white fish and seasonings. I like these dipped in sweet and sour sauce.
We are both big fans of steamed dumplings so we ordered a lot of these. There's prawn har gow and also the rounder shell versions using scallops which we end up ordering. These are nice but I think I should have just gone for the prawn ones which I always like. The trolley ladies make sure to give us the steamers on the second rack so that they are warmer.
There are a couple of spinach dumplings, one round and one half moon shape. The half moon prawn and spinach dumpling has a hint of mustard greens in it.
The round spinach dumpling is full of garlic and wilted spinach and is plump and delicious. I always enjoy these dumplings and they never feel like a boring option.
There are also some prawn dumplings that look like green tacos filled with bouncy prawns. There was a little difficult to eat as they are a bit hard to pick up but they are tasty.
The sticky rice is nice with a slice of lup cheng sausage, saucy pork mince and a boiled egg yolk – it does need a more seasoning so we ask for some soy sauce to add on top.
It's time to order from the deep fry trolley. We start with some wu gok or taro footballs. These are a little under seasoned as well and the fried items are a bit cold which is a bit disappointing.
The football shaped ham sui gok with a chewy, glutinous rice filled with seasoned mince pork are also cold but because they are well seasoned we still really enjoy these and they are absolutely delicious. I like the amount of filling in these too as these can sometimes be a little empty. Give me a dozen of these.
Laura loves the prawn rice paper rolls so we order some of these. Again the deep fried offerings are not hot so that does take a bit away from them and I mostly leave these for her.
"I need something else," says Laura looking around. Now is as good a time as any to order from the dessert cart. She loves coconut jelly and it comes in three tall triangular blocks of wobbly, snow white coconut jelly that is lightly sweet.
We also order some egg tarts with a multi layered pastry and a mildly sweet egg custard in the centre. I always just need one bite of these but for me, it's all about mango pancakes but we don't see these on the trolley until the very end.
Laura has not tried sweet tofu before so we order one. It comes from the big wooden bucket of tofu with a warm ginger syrup. The tofu itself isn't sweet so a sweeter and more gingery syrup would be great just to balance the flavours.
By now we've packed up any leftovers to take home to our partners but Laura always has an eye out for new offerings and the lady who was pushing the trolley with gai larn on it has a new item - large sesame balls. These deep-fried balls are empty but have a chewy, glutinous mochi-like texture to them and just the right level of sweetness. She cuts one half orb in four and points at the other and says that we could take that one home. It must be said that the trolley ladies are super friendly and nice here and they often stop by for thumbs up and smiles. The staff in general are really helpful.
There is one more yum cha item that we both love that we rarely see at yum cha and that is the zhaliang Chinese doughnut wrapped in rice paper but we like the version stuffed with prawns. Laura spotted a red item on the trolley of the gai larn lady but she's off in the distance and doesn't come past us. I'm curious so I get up to look to see what the red item is. I see the item on another table and it's our favourite prawn roll! I asked the people at the table about it and they tell us that they made a special order. A lovely girl at the table kindly offers to help us order one too.
This one is slightly different from the one that we had at Palace Yum Cha, which is more of prawn mousse. This has actual pieces of prawn inside a fritter and then the red rice paper is wrapped around it. It comes with two sauces, a slightly sweetened soy sauce and a mysterious creamy sauce which I swear is a mixture of Praise mayonnaise and a touch of lemon juice. It's actually delicious dipped into both sauces and even though we are quite full I go for a second and third piece. So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever tried the prawn donut roll? Do you have a must order item at yum cha?
This meal was independently paid for.
Garden Palace
Level 2 405/411 Sussex St, Haymarket NSW 2000
Open 7 days 11 am–3 pm, 5–10 pm
Phone: 0426 208 208
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