We got there at 1:30 for a 2pm opening and still didn’t have food in front of us until after 3. By the time we were seated, the matcha item I’d been planning to order for weeks had already sold out. I wasn’t even annoyed, which tells you something about how this one’s been going in Chatswood lately.
Sugar Trend Dessert is one of a small wave of new Chinese dessert shops that have opened around Chatswood in the last couple of months, and it’s fair to say it’s the one everyone’s currently talking about. Small shop, big menu, longer queue than the size of the place really justifies.
Where It Is and What to Expect Before You Order
The shop is tucked into the residential street behind Chatswood station rather than on the main strip, so it’s easy to walk past if you’re not looking for it. It’s genuinely tiny inside. On a Saturday, doors open at 2pm, and if you’re not early, you’re sitting outside regardless of the weather — the staff explained that once the outdoor queue builds up, there’s no way to let inside seating jump ahead of it. Fair enough, if a little rough on whoever gets there first and ends up in the cold anyway.
The ordering process is worth knowing about before you go. At opening, everyone gets handed a QR code that lets you build your order on your phone, but it won’t let you actually pay — you still need to queue again at the counter to confirm and pay in person. It’s a sensible system for a shop this size (it stops people wandering off without paying), but it does mean two queues instead of one, and ours was made longer by a payment system outage that was affecting card terminals more broadly that day. A “pay directly online” option would fix a lot of this, and hopefully that’s coming.
What We Actually Ordered
We ordered four dishes between two people, which turned out to be more than enough:
Matcha taro double-skin milk was the standout. Matcha custard sits over a base of double-skin milk, with a taro paste ball underneath that looks small but is genuinely substantial once you get into it. Not overly sweet, and the matcha and taro combination was good enough that I honestly forgot to properly assess the milk pudding underneath it.
Mango pomelo sago with soy pudding was the one we liked least. The mango pomelo sauce and the pudding underneath both lean sweet, and together they cancel out most of the individual flavour rather than complementing each other. The chewy bits in ours were water chestnut rather than sago, and texture-wise it was fairly unremarkable.
Peach gum, lotus seed and white fungus with pear was the one we almost didn’t order. We only picked it because we wanted something hot after standing outside. Honestly, it surprised us. The lotus seeds were soft, the pear had gone all the way through without turning to mush, and it just felt like the kind of thing your grandmother would make if she had the patience for it. Not exciting on paper, but it was the dish I kept going back to with my spoon.
Ginger milk pudding is one of those dishes where you can tell pretty quickly if a place actually knows what it’s doing. Ours had a good ginger hit, though I wouldn’t have minded it a touch stronger. The skin on top had a few small bubbles in it, so it probably wasn’t set at quite the right temperature — a small thing, but if you’ve had a really good version elsewhere you’ll notice it.
Out of the four, the mango pomelo pudding was the only one we wouldn’t order again. Everything else held up, and nothing was cloying, which matters a lot to us since we’re not big fans of overly sweet desserts.
What to Know Before You Go
Get there at least half an hour before opening if you want a shot at a table — you’ll probably end up outside either way, so dress for it. Bring some cash too, since the card machines had issues the day we went and the payment queue was already the slow part. If you’ve got your heart set on a matcha dish, order it as soon as you can, because it sells out well before closing. And don’t write off the hot dishes just because a cold dessert looks more appealing on the day — the peach gum and white fungus soup ended up being the best thing we ate.
Exact opening hours and the current menu are best checked on Sugar Trend’s own Instagram before you head out, since a shop this new and this popular tends to adjust things week to week.
Is It Worth the Queue?
For a first visit, yes, with the caveat that you should go in expecting a proper queue rather than a quick stop. The portions on a couple of dishes felt a little small for the price point, and the ordering system needs smoothing out, but the kitchen clearly knows what it’s doing with the classics — the double-skin milk and the peach gum soup alone are worth the wait. If Chatswood’s dessert scene keeps expanding at this rate, it’s worth checking our things to do around Sydney page next time you’re planning a day out that way, since a few more spots worth queuing for keep popping up nearby.