Golden Century - Haymarket

Birthday dinner to celebrate one who's 85 years young. Of course we had to order what she loves eating - lobster was definately on the books - and abalone (even if it's just for the grandness).

The abalone was thinly sliced and quickly cooked shabu-shabu style in a sweet sweet broth. Makes the abalone slices light with a subtle sweet taste and incredibly tender and easy to chew through. Whilst I thought it was delicious, it seemed to fail expectations from others on the table. I reckon that it was because they didn't make adequate use of the soy sauce. This soy sauce was most excellent - not overpowering but has a subtle shallot/chilli/sweet taste to it. Very awesome.

Abalone shabu shabu style

With the abalone comes the lettuce, also cooked in the sweet broth made even sweeter by the abalone slices. And the broth afterwards was sooooo soooo soooo sweet.

lettuce accompanying the abalone

Now for the birthday girl's favourite dish. Huge huge lobster on an egg noodle base with lots of shallots and garlic. There were super large chunks of lobster meat galore and the noodles soaked in all the lobster juices making it possibly even yummier than the lobster :) However, the birthday girl only gave it a mere 8/10.

Lobster with egg-noodle base

Now for the steamed coral trout. This was cooked really well. Unlike all the crappy versions of the way this fish is cooked at wedding banquets, this fish was steamed just right - the flesh just slid off the bone and melted in your mouth. It extremely fresh and again, very sweet and very well cooked.

Steamed coral trout

This next dish was no where near up to standards. Supposed to be pan-fried tofu stuffed with fish-paste, it came out as a tofu mess - some bits more burnt than others and fish paste balls shrewn everywhere. Not a pretty sight. Nothing spectacular. Just like tofu drenched in oyster sauce.

pan-fried tofu with fish paste

The presentation of this next dish was also a dissappointment. Green veges heaped with enoki mushrooms and again, drenched in oystersauce. This means exactly the same taste, slightly different texture. For a restaurant which churns out great seafood, they really need to fix up their simple dishes.

Veges with enoki mushrooms

Last dish for the night was the crispy skinned chicken. Luckily, this did not dissappoint. The skin was crispy and the chicken was... chicken-tasting. One fault in this dish was the prawn crackers - they were slightly heading towards the stale end of the scale.

Crispy-skinned chicken

Instead of a birthday cake, the traditional chinese way is the steamed lotus-paste buns. A big one with many little ones encased within. Very cute. The little buns were steamed fresh, not too sweet, not too bland. However, the big one was just for looks - just a bit of tasteless bun outing with colouring.

Lotus paste birthday bun

This popular Chinese restaurant was packed out on a Monday night. Service was very so-so. Seafood cooked pretty close to perfectly but non-seafood dishes are definately worse quality.
So maybe you're ONLY supposed to order seafood here? :)

Ratings:
Food - 8.5/10
Service - 6.5/10
Ambiance - 6.5/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 28.5/40

Golden Century Seafood Restaurant
393 Sussex St
Haymarket
NSW 2000
tel: (02) 9212 3901