Dixon House Food Court

Never really had an interest in this Chinatown food court until recently. The Ma La Soup DIY soup stand opened a few months back and has certainly been the most popular stall since.
Dixon house is edgy and reminds me a little of food courts in Asia. There is nothing fancy about the stalls here, just honest good food for the masses.
Tables are cleared and given a quick wipe before being claimed by the next hungry patron. I would hate to test the tables for Sanitation but thats half the appeal about this food court.

if you find yourself spending more then 20 bucks for Chinese food then you probably didn’t know about this place. I’ve managed to come here everyday when I was Sydney due to the fact that its good and not only because it was cheap. The ingredients were pretty much fresh and the lady barely speak any english but I was able to let her know that I want more vegetables on my friend rice.
Its a hidden gem in the middle of Chinatown and tucked into a street corner among all the Asian ‘con’ Fusion cuisines. I’d have this any day than your reconstructed Tofu Foo Yum Crap. LoL

This is one of the older and less attractive Food Courts in China Town. Never the less it still offers a good range of Asian food stalls — mainly Chinese, Thai, Indonesian/​Malaysian and Japanese. Also a variety of drink outlets serving the popular Asian Teas with the funny jellies and ice trimmings.
All stores are cash only — that’s why the prices can be kept down I suppose.
The place was rather untidy when I visited as there wasn’t enough staff cleaning and clearing the tables. This small issue aside — it is still worth a visit as you never know what you will find.
My favourites outlet here is the Indonesian food selling three choices for $ 9.50 on white steamed rice. A bargain just like in Bali!

This is a hidden gem in Chinatown!
A plethora of Asian cuisines available for great prices (note that most places here accept cash only).
Love some of the sizzling dishes available in this food court bonanza.

this city has great Asian food, and this place is no exception. Wide variety and cheaper prices. Cash only. Can be confusing though, and don’t expect superb service

A floor of just a variety of Asian foods for those of us who are craving Asian foods and want a little bit of everything. The portions are decently sized and the food overall is decent. Obviously do not come here expecting some top of the line best Chinese food of your life. But do expect to come here and get a good meal to eat and not come out still hungry. Seating is plentiful (at least all the times I’ve been and it’s been a few times). Grab a few different items and share with friends if you want to try something new.

I discovered this place accidentally on my last visit to Sydney and just keep coming back. It’s initially intimidating entering this food court but once you place an order and dig into your mountain of food it’s awesome.
Some of the ladies working the counters are a little grouchy but what can you do.

Wish there was a 1.5 star option, but in any case this food court has let me down on all four visits, unfortunately. The only winner was the first visit with a friend to a korean stall BEFORE change of management, and now it’s a dump.
I have since tried Chinese BBQ pork stirfry which was inedible as the soup was full of cooking oil and the «BBQ» meat was stringy and disgusting. Definitely wouldn’t go back. My friend’s sweet and sour pork was little better, at minimum edibility.
On my last visit, I had chicken noodle soup from Hainan chicken rice place. It was very plain and not something I would come back for. Wouldn’t mind going back on an off chance to try Japanese, but not for another 6 months!

OK folks, pay attention. As many times as I’ve eaten here I always refer to it as the Podium Lady. It’s the only counter that the person taking the orders stand behind a podium and you get a number for your delicious sizzling platter piled high. I love the Schezuan shrimp (ask for light on the peppers or you’ll burn something fierce). A dozen Large shrimp with heaps of in season vegetables with a side of rice. Love it. Tried other dishes which were OK but keep going back to the shrimp dish. There is always a line of people waiting for their number to be called. They are fast and wonderful. So many choices so be creative. Another favorite must have every trip.

An Asian food hall so authentic I expect at any moment Chow Yun-​Fat to bust through the entrance in a John Woo style tornado of two-​fisted, gunslinging, Hong Kong movie climax action.
Thankfully, cool as it would be, it’s hasn’t yet happened. The food has most assuredly happened to me though. Repeatedly. Eating here brings back fond memories of hawker markets in Singapore, back alley eateries in Hong Kong and street vendors in Thailand. Hands down the most authentic food Asian cuisine in Sydney.
In life as in food courts, you take the good with the bad. In this case, it looks like the place was built in the 70’s and hasn’t so much as had a table replaced since. It adds to the ambience but I wouldn’t recommend this as the place for a first date you’d really like to impress. Unless they enjoy Chow Yun-​Fat movies as much as I do, in which case I couldn’t think of a better place to go. Just remember to dive behind a counter when the bullets start flying, no one wants to be a mook for the rest of their (shortened) lives.

Amazing food court in the heart of Sydney’s Chinatown. Sure, the interior is a bit grungy and a bit low rent (it opened in 1982 and hasn’t had a renovation since, it has a 1980s Hong Kong feel about it), but where else in Sydney can you get large portions of delicious, authentic Asian food (in an ‘authentic’ Asian setting, a dingy Chinese food hall) for less than $ 10?
There’s quite a diverse range of cusines from the 15 or so stalls that line the walls of this underground food court, ranging from all types of regional Chinese (including Sichanese, Cantonese and Shanghainese) as well as Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Indonesian. The stalls that i’ve tried (‘Sizzling and Hot Pot Kitchen’, ‘Won Ton Noodle House’, ‘Shanghai Delicious Food’ and ‘Pondok Selera Indonesian Food’) have all been great, I can safely recommend any of those.
There is also a bar selling all kinds of local and imported beer, in addition to one of the food stalls doubling as a fresh juice/​soft drink stall. A must-​try however is the sugar-​cane juice stall in the far corner, that stuff is to die for. I see many locals taking home bottles of the stuff (about $ 7), but you can get smaller containers of it for $ 3 or there abouts.
The food court can often be crowded, especially around lunch time. It may be difficult to find a seat, and you may have to ‘stalk’ other diners in order to get a seat. However I suggest looking in the rear of the food court, it seems to be less noisy and crowded back there than in the main area, and a good place to find a seat if it is crowded.
So, if you even slightly enjoy Asian cuisine, then walk down the stairs at any of the the three dodgy looking street level entrances and enter the cavernous, steam filled food hall beneath the streets of Sydney’s Chinatown. There is also lift/​disabled access from inside the Dixon House arcade (which is an experience in itself; a bizarre flashback to Chinatowns of old, full of Chinese clothing stores, travel agents, herbal medicinists and hairdressers).

Someone in Dixon House has invented a matter transporter.
They may very well have been the first in the world to develop and use this technology for a commercial purpose. What they’ve done is this: taken a basement noodle den straight outta some backwater Chinese province and transported it into the lower ground level of their building in the middle of Sydney’s Chinatown. There is literally a huge, eternally cramped, steam-​ridden and people-​packed food court buzzing below the street. It’s doubtful the operators of the tiny food stalls know they have been relocated, that they are in fact on a different continent, hundreds of miles from their families and villages. I wonder what will happen when they find out.
Until they do, it’s great for the rest of us: we get criminally cheap, unbelievably authentic Chinese cuisine spanning the length and breadth of that great Oriental mainstay, everything from sizzling Sichuan hotpots to Shanghai noodles, dumpling soups to entire exotic fishes slathered with chili and XO.
It’ll take you up to 20 minutes and some serious stalking to stake out a seat. Then that long again to order, get your food and simultaneously protect your table from other beady-​eyed lurkers on the look-​out for some eating-​space. But man oh man is it worth it. One of the best eat secrets in Sydney.

Found it on a stroll through Chinatown on my trip to Sydney. All Asian food court, thai, chinese, indonesian, malaysian, camodian, japanese. Great price, good food. It can be crowded during lunch and dinner. Avoid the sizzling plate restaurant during busy hours, it too them 30min to have my plate ready, that’s far too long to wait especially there’s so many good vendor to choose from.

here and eating world are both worth walking down to check out the vendors and find the most crowded ones to sample something to eat. the chinese hamburger at oriental dumpling king not quite as good as I expected it to be, but you should get dumplings

A colleague discovered Dixon house and was kind enough to share it with me… it’s slightly off the beaten track and if he hadn’t shown me it I probably would not have gone inside… The exterior looks quite dodgy but once you enter down the stairs into the food court you end up being pleasantly suprised.
There is an incredible collection of different food stalls including Korean, Chinese, Japanese and if you’ll feeling daring why not by something that you normally wouldn’t have…
We had a hot Korean BBQ — which delivered a plate so hot that it ended up melting the plastic tray — the food was fresh and delicious — I was impressed! My other recommendation is a place which sells sugar cane juice with lime — it’s costs around $ 4 and its so amazing its worth every cent…
Definitely a crazy fun place to discover :)

Dixon House Food Court reminds me of the cantina from Star Wars or something not too dissimilar. There’s a lot of shouting and noise, a lot of hustle and bustle, a lot of great smells, a visual deluge of photos in front of each booth with little prices next to them, a lot of dated wood panelled décor.
I was brought here by a friend and I’ll be honest: I was a total rookie. I browsed a while, placed my tenative order, and then hovered around the little window of the shopfront. I didn’t realise you could go sit down, so the lady kept saying «Not long, boy. It’s coming, boy.» So I finally took a seat and a few minutes and eventually «IT’S READY, BOYYYYYY». I couldn’t even tell you what I ordered and that’s sort of the point: there’s too much sensory impulse to correctly make a decision or to make a judgement. What I can say is that it was a prawn and noodle dish and it was pretty flavourful and I couldn’t finish it all. Anything more is a blur.

Hidden in the depths of Chinatown, you could quite easily walk past the entrance without realising it was there. A couple of automatic doors (which may need to be checked, as they closed on a poor gentleman — in fact that was what drew my attention in the first place) mark the entrance to the Tardis of food courts. I say this, because on the outside, it looks like nothing, then once you make your way down a few stairs, it opens up into an array of Asian food stalls.
Now, much in the same way as my Eating World experience, there were a lot of the same looking selections, each with their own individual kitchens housed behind a small curtain — although the difference here was that as I walked down the stairs, I was greeted by a small Chinese lady poking here head out of her stall to say hello, scaring the crap out of me in the process. I ended up going with Thai and getting a generous and extremely tasty serving of chicken larb.
Now, my favourite part of this particular food court is the little juice bar that sells fresh sugar cane juice. And you know it’s fresh, because the weapon-​sized sticks of sugar cane are kept in full view — so no one will be holding up this particular kiosk! The juice from the cane is mixed with lime and poured over ice and damn it’s good! So even if you’ve eaten, head down here just to get some!