Palace ChineseRestaurant

Up a level in Piccadilly Tower, off Castlereagh Street, this Cantonese room has been running yum cha since 2000, long enough to count as an institution in a city that churns through Chinese restaurants. The daytime trade is the draw: somewhere near eighty varieties of dim sum, steamed and deep-fried and baked, savoury and sweet, moving out of the kitchen in a steady midday procession to a devoted lunch crowd. The bar is set high on the small stuff, but the kitchen also cooks for occasion. Come evening the menu turns to banquet territory, mud crab vermicelli hot pot, wagyu beef hot pot, Shan Tong chicken, seafood plates and a brine duck platter built for a full table. The setting is comfortable and a little formal, the kind of first-floor dining room that has quietly outlasted flashier newcomers by keeping the cooking consistent. In a CBD thick with options, it has held a loyal following for more than two decades by treating traditional Cantonese cooking as something to be done properly rather than reinvented. The reward for finding it, tucked above the street, is yum cha with genuine range and a kitchen that still takes it seriously.