Shang Lamb Soup has a lived-in quality. The menus are frayed, the drinks and chopsticks are self-serve, the specials are scrawled in chalk behind the counter. It’s spring, and the mini restaurant is decorated with posters detailing Sydney’s “Lamb Trail”: Zheng’s Skewers in Eastwood; Haidilao in Chatswood; Xi’ang Eatery in Burwood; Biang Biang Noodles in Haymarket. Esteemed company, but none come close to giving the attention Shang Lamb Soup does to everything ovine. Here’s the namesake soup, sweet and delicate, with translucent potato noodles coiled in milk-white lamb broth. There’s a plate of barbecued lamb skewers – or crisp, giving ribs or a whole damn shank – with sweet-salty cumin on hand for sprinkling. Offal abounds, too – five-spiced as a side; topping soups – while the lamb fried rice is a sure pick on tables of both ravenous regulars and influencers, all unfailingly over-ordering, then packing up extras to keep the trail going all the way home.