BRAVE NEW WORLD
The closure of Superbowl was the canary in the mine for Sydney’s Chinatown. Since the 1970s, the Dixon Street restaurant has done a roaring trade in congee, beef hor fun (stir-fried rice noodles) and Peking duck. It was a solid option for lunch and dinner, and a hotspot for hungry late-night revellers who lacked the cash to splash at Golden Century. When it closed, unexpectedly, in late March, it was a sign of the growing challenges facing the restaurant industry in the historic precinct.
The hospitality industry has worn the cost of the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown. But as news of a mysterious virus from Wuhan made headlines in Australia, restaurants and bars in Sydney’s Chinatown were hit first. Spooked diners stayed away in January and February; then there was that ghostly limp through lockdown where the once-bustling precinct became a shell of its former neon-lit self.
The future of food businesses in the Chinatown precinct now hangs in the balance. Because when a community has sustained intense damage in such a short period of time, how much longer can it endure?
Melbourne lays claim to Australia’s oldest Chinatown, but Sydney’s is the largest in the southern hemisphere. Chinatown lies in the suburb of Haymarket in the south CBD. The pedestrian-only Dixon Street, bookended by two paifang (traditional Chinese arched
