XOPP byGolden Century

When one of Sydney's most mourned Cantonese seafood houses closed, the family behind it regrouped a few blocks away on the mezzanine of Darling Square's Exchange building, trading the old Chinatown grandeur for something looser and brighter. The cooking still orbits live tanks, with lobster and mud crab pulled to order, but the register is playful. XO pippies, the dish that lends the room its shorthand, arrive slicked in the family's fiercely savoury house sauce; that same paste tops mini mantou crowned with prawn, a snack engineered for a new generation raised on both yum cha and share plates. Crisp-skinned roasted pigeon, san choy bow and a plate of Singapore noodles round out a menu that reads as greatest-hits reworked rather than reinvented. Afternoons bring a dedicated yum cha window, and three private rooms seat parties from ten to forty beneath a considered, contemporary fit-out. The wine list runs longer than the casual framing suggests. It is less a reinvention than a continuation: the same obsession with seafood and technique, carried into a smaller, sharper room where the ceremony has been dialled down and the flavours left deliberately loud.