Best Chinese restaurants in Melbourne

Flower Drum

17 Market Ln, Melbourne

Imagine the backlash if this wasn’t on the list! The Flower Drum opened in 1975 and is a Melbourne icon. It’s a formal, special occasion restaurant where fleets of waiters will attend to your every need in an opulent, old school dining room. The food is precisely cooked, classic Cantonese fare using top produce.

Lau’s Family Kitchen

4 Acland St, St Kilda

This is the affordable version of Flower Drum. Run by Gilbert Lau’s experienced offspring, it serves up mostly Cantonese food in a small, sophisticated space with dark timber panelling and exposed concrete ceilings. It’s all about clean flavours and very slick service. Clearly they’ve been taught by the best.

HuTong Dumpling Bar

14-16 Market Ln, Melbourne

If you manage to get a seat at this popular three-level restaurant you’ll need a technique for eating the famed shaolong bao. One wrong move will see you squirt hot soup down your best nudie jeans. One technique is to stab the dumpling with a chopstick, suck the soup out and devour. Stab, suck, devour. Chilli wantons are also a must-try.

Golden Dragon Palace

363 Manningham Rd,
Lower Templestowe

Hundreds of suburban Chinese families can’t be wrong. Join the hordes as they descend on Golden Dragon Palace for yum cha. Good eats are the hairy fried taro balls and the simple yet effective steamed scallop dumplings. A little bit pricier than the average yum cha, but for that you get to dine in OTT Chinese palatial type surrounds.

David’s

4 Cecil Pl, Prahran

David likes to explore the health giving properties of food and tea: double boiled duck meat soup will increase your libido while the relaxing tea will, well, relax you. Elegant northern style food like the ‘mock crab’ with scallops and fish cooked in dreamy egg scrambles or the delicate braised fish in Chinese rice wine and ginger is served amidst beautiful Shanghai mansion type surrounds . David’s is style and substance.

Gold Leaf - Burwood East

155 Burwood Hwy, Burwood East

Gold Leaf in Burwood East is one of four Gold Leaf restaurants also in Springvale, Preston and Sunshine. It’s a popular place for weekend yum cha and a good range of dim sum is on offer. Their baked drizzling sand bun, shaped like a little muffin, is exceptionally good.

Wonton House Secret Kitchen

Shop 7b-7c, Century City Walk,
285 Springvale Rd, Glen Waverley

Situated in the middle of Century City Walk, Wonton House Secret Kitchen is a casual place for cheap and cheerful eats. Yum cha is offered a la carte, and the dim sums are fresh and the pastry skin delicate. Love the little savoury pastries filled with shredded turnip.

Man Mo

42 Newquay Prom, Docklands

If it’s getting too windy at the Docklands take cover in Man Mo (not that you need an excuse to come here). The food is mostly Cantonese with south-east Asian influences. Presentation of dishes is taken seriously and stand outs are the steamed prawn and chicken parcel in an egg white pastry skin and the fried stuffed garfish.

Hakka Tea House

25 Railway Pde, Glen Waverley

Opposite the railway station, this popular Chinese restaurant takes up two shop fronts and features Hakka cuisine (found in South-Eastern China). Put your blinkers on with the décor, it’s all about good, fast and filling food at an affordable price. Try their organic salted chicken and stuffed tofu, both house specialties. Make sure to book.

Dainty Sichuan Food

176 Toorak Rd, South Yarra

There’s nothing understated about the flavours here. Sichuan food (south-west China) is all about hot, sweet, tingly and pungent tastes. A beef hot pot is swimming in a fiery liquid filled with chilli, noodles, bean sprouts and explosions of Sichuan peppercorns, while the famed ‘fish flavoured eggplant’ – battered and fried eggplant fingers – is simultaneously sticky, sweet with a hint of chilli. Keep a glass of water handy and feel the burn.