‘Everyone knows that’s where you get your barbecue meats’: The Good Food guide to Hurstville
Walk down Forest Road and the signage might point to restaurants with roots in Taiwan, Myanmar, Sichuan and Xinjiang. Here’s where to find the best dumplings, noodles, roast goose and more.
Speak to someone who grew up in Hurstville and they’ll tell you that in the ’90s, the library was just about the only high-rise in town. Today, the streetscape looks different, with more apartment blocks, more chain restaurants and a Westfield right in the centre. But among the new, there’s still plenty to remind you that this southern Sydney suburb lives and breathes, with stories behind every shopfront.
One of those stories belongs to David Chan, whose father, Tak Ming, and “uncle” Chi Sun-cheng founded Sun Ming Restaurant on Forest Road in 1995 after emigrating from Hong Kong. Chan, who grew up among the clatter of woks, runs Sun Ming today, offering classic Hong Kong cafe dishes to multiple generations of diners, each finding different layers of meaning in plates of pork chops over rice or stir-fried beef noodles.
Chan has seen Hurstville change dramatically over his lifetime. During his childhood, he recalls many of the shops reflecting the historical British and Irish roots of the community, along with Italian and Greek. The 1990s brought a shift as Hurstville became the centre of the Hong Kong diaspora, before more migration from mainland China made it home to one of Sydney’s largest Chinese communities.
“There were only a few Chinese restaurants when we first started,” Chan says. “But now there are a lot of different Chinese restaurants, and not just Cantonese restaurants any more – the variety is a lot better than it was 30 years ago.”
Walk down Forest Road and the signage might point to restaurants with roots in Taiwan, Sichuan, Hubei, Shanghai or Xinjiang, while those remaining Cantonese restaurants are now institutions, from Hurstville Chinese Restaurant to Canton Noodle House.
For someone without Chinese heritage who grew up in the area such as Jean-Paul El Tom, co-founder of Baba’s Place, that sense of community wasn’t as accessible. But finding the links between his own Lebanese roots and regional Chinese cuisine set off ideas that inspired what has become one of Sydney’s most singular restaurants.
“Finding out about northern Chinese and central Chinese food was a big eye-opener for me,” he says.
“I remember I came home one day from school, and I was walking up the stairs to the apartment, and I could smell what I thought was my mum’s cooking because it was very garlicky, oniony, but I opened the door and no one was at my house. It was actually the neighbour, and it just made me feel nostalgic and safe, but she wasn’t cooking Lebanese food, she was cooking Chinese.”
When El Tom then visited Shang Lamb Soup, where Simon Jing began to educate him about the common threads between northern China and the Middle East in the lamb, cumin, nut pastes and sesame seeds, it changed everything.
“Shang Lamb is what I hold onto the most from Hurstville,” says El Tom. “It taught me about how the food that people bring in their suitcases from other countries, and the food that we grow to know about when we live in Australia, is not really the entire picture.”
These snapshots and crossovers are everywhere on Forest Road.
Shang Lamb Soup
It’s six years and counting for Simon Jing and Suki Wu, who in tiny surrounds run one of Sydney’s most distinct restaurants, focusing on all things ovine rendered in Shanxi style. The signature lamb soup – milk-white, clean and complex – is reason enough to drop in, with marinated grilled lamb and translucent potato noodles adding heft, but there’s plenty more to get around. Barbecued lamb skewers, or ribs, or even a shank, come hot and crisp-edged from the grill, with sweet-salty cumin for sprinkling. Offal fans can sink into a soup flush with tripe, heart and lung, while lamb fried rice is a staple for groups overloading the tables. There’s a sister restaurant, Super Lamb Soup, in Chatswood too.
6/380 Forest Road, Hurstville
Phu Cuong King’s Hot Bread
King’s has been pumping out Hurstville’s most revered banh mi since 1997. Open from 6am, and renowned for the generosity of their fillings and the scope of their menu, the only question is which way to roll. Go classic with a banh mi thit, and red onion adds a little something extra to a comforting staple. Break the mould and things go from as simple as a schnitzel roll to as hefty as ones stuffed with chicken and dim sum – together at last. Don’t sleep on the wings either, full of satisfying crunch, or the prospect of adding crunchy fried chicken bits to any sandwich.
273 Forest Road, Hurstville
Taste of Shunde
Named for the district in southern China considered to be the birthplace of Cantonese cuisine, Taste of Shunde is nothing if not an experience. A refresh has transformed the downstairs portion of Sam Luo’s restaurant into a brightly lit specialty grocer, but head to level two and the surrounds are swish, complete with chandeliers and a discreet children’s playground open during yum cha hours.
Come nightfall, groups load up the table with Shunde signatures, centred around an epic steamed platter of intricately arranged coral trout from the tanks, say, sauced three ways, then lined with pipis and prawns and served on a bed of slippery sheet noodles. Roasted or marinated goose is a must, as is cloud-like fried milk, and a bracing salad of iced bitter melon brought into check by salted peanuts and fried taro, but there are wins all over the menu. Here and in Eastwood.
9-11 Crofts Avenue, Hurstville
Hurstville Central
The shopping centre above Hurstville railway station is in a constant state of flux, with stalls opening and closing as often as the vending machines are replenished with the next set of Pokemon cards. Join the grab-and-go line at Tans Dumpling and Bun and the hot box is filled with freshly made bing, steamed buns stuffed with shallot-scented pork, and crisp-based dumplings, all made by a brigade of skilled aunties folding and shaping behind the scenes. Tubs of pig’s ear salads, cold skin noodles and more are also on hand to stock up the fridge. Cho Express is always a good call for braised pork or Taiwanese fried chicken, while Bengong Metro is the place for pillowy butter rice cakes and custardy croissant egg tarts flavoured with taro.
Hurstville Central, 225 Forest Road, Hurstville
Blue Heaven
At first glance, Blue Heaven looks like a Thai dessert cafe, flush with plastic mangoes, a stall selling banana fritters and a menu listing towering Thai tea-flavoured bingsu. But this brightly lit newcomer also happens to serve some of Sydney’s most nuanced Burmese cooking.
Opened in April by Tommy Young, who previously ran Pink Peppercorn in Paddington, its specialties are some of Myanmar’s most renowned dishes, here rendered in full colour. Expect bitter, fragrant laphet thoke, the salad of fermented tea leaves with funk from fish sauce and dried shrimp and crunch from peanuts and sesame seeds, or rich, complex mohinga, the fish noodle soup brimming with chopped egg and satisfyingly crunchy lotus root.
238 Forest Road, Hurstville
Sun Ming Restaurant
Hurtsville’s original cha chaan teng is still going strong after 30 years. If there’s a strength, it’s in how owner David Chan has mixed things up just a little, but stayed true to Sun Ming’s roots. “I think everyone has come back because it’s nostalgic food, it’s just traditional, classic Hong Kong cafe food,” he says. “I like to say it’s like soul food, but for Chinese people.”
Dishes that pull on the heartstrings could be as simple as pineapple buns stuffed with butter, but then Sun Ming has also made signatures of sizzling tofu, sticky fried rice with a healthy dose of dried shrimp, plus seafood specials, including steamed garlic king prawns. Chan says “I’ve seen couples come in throughout the years, they’ll get married, have kids, and now the kids are teenagers who come in after school – it’s wild.” Time may be passing, the suburb may be changing, but Chan is still making memories for a new generation.
173A Forest Road, Hurstville
Hurstville Chinese Restaurant
Another longstanding Forest Road icon, Hurstville Chinese is still the go-to for family gatherings and auspicious occasions. The live seafood tanks brim with lobster and coral trout, the tablecloths are crisp and white, and veteran waiters still look the part in suits and waistcoats. The menu packs plenty of Cantonese classics, and while steamed live seafood and specials such as stir-fried pork jowl with snow peas and chives are draws, the squab, crisp-skinned and gleaming, has flesh that’s sweet and juicy the whole way through. One of the best.
184 Forest Road, Hurstville
Canton Noodle House
Founded in 1994, Canton Noodle House first made its name under the guidance of Annie So, whose parents had run Cantonese restaurants since the ’80s. Today there are new owners, but every piece is in its place, ensuring this home-style institution is as cherished as always.
Laminated pastel-coloured menus run the gamut of classics, from spring rolls and curry puffs through congee with pork and thousand-year eggs, while menu boards running wall-to-wall list them in pinyin. This is the kind of beloved neighbourhood kitchen where every regular has their own favourites, but wonton noodle soup is always a good call, the dumplings stuffed with generous hunks of pork and prawn, the egg noodles bouncy, the beef flank (add it), rich and fatty. Specials list the salt and pepper whitebait, impossibly crisp and addictively seasoned, among others.
3/206 Forest Road, Hurstville
Golden Sands
A local institution tucked upstairs in Hurstville Times Plaza, Golden Sands is the undisputed king of yum cha in the suburb, especially after the closure of Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant in 2021. Steamed pork ribs and siu mai hit the mark, and golden-skinned roast goose – exceptionally juicy and sweet-tasting – is a staple of the premium yum cha banquet, available for groups. Plates ferried out to order, and the range is impressive, with claypot specials and textural free-range chicken and jellyfish salad. Come nightfall, go large with a whole goose, live seafood and soup served in a decorative winter melon.
Level 2/127-141 Forest Road, Hurstville
Golden Sun BBQ
Is there a Sydney suburb offering more serious poultry in such a short stretch than Hurstville? Golden Sands and Taste of Shunde already do a fine line in goose, Chao BBQ has offered Nanjing salted duck in its line-up since 1995, and then there’s Golden Sun BBQ, which draws a steady queue from doors open: “Everyone in the Cantonese community knows that that’s where you go to get your barbecue meats,” says Chan. All the staples are here – glistening char siu, plump soy chickens, handsome roast ducks – but equally appealing is the range of offal, as well as fat sausage links cleaved into coins on the wood block. It’s the pei pa duck that’s a bit special, butterflied so it resembles the pear-shaped stringed instrument that gives it its name, then roasted until crisp and lacquered. Pro tip: tubs of ginger-shallot sauce are only $1, so load up.
178 Forest Road, Hurstville
Delight Dim Sim
A sunny shopfront where the restaurants start to dry up on Forest Road, Delight Dim Sum has small dimensions, but its output is mighty. Most floorspace is taken up by a production kitchen, while fridges and freezers are packed with dumplings to take home: pork with preserved vegetables; beef brisket; Chaozhou dumplings stuffed with prawns and pork. But then the steamers and hot boxes are worth a look for har gau with a refreshing amount of water chestnut or pillowy ham sui guk fragrant with five spice. The real draw is the tray of zongzi, or sticky rice dumplings, steamed in bamboo leaves and packing mung beans and fillings ranging from taro to pork belly.
121 Forest Road, Hurstville