Delicious.100: Victoria’s best Asian restaurants
Silky duck wontons, egg noodles slippery in XO sauce or the city’s best Vietnamese spring rolls – follow your tastebuds to the table at Melbourne’s best Asian restaurants.
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MYA TIGER
St Kilda’s reborn Espy has proven it’s more than a summer fling of prize views and long queues, still pulling a crowd whatever the weather.
And one of the grand dame’s drawcards is Mya Tiger, the first-floor Cantonese charmer where velvet booths, rattan and peeling paint take shabby chic to covetable new heights.
a satisfyingly generous line-up of many of the menu’s greatest hits: oysters in a zingy rice wine vinaigrette, kingfish in yuzu, the numbing heat of crunchy school prawns and five-spice chicken ribs, tender wagyu pieces in black pepper, half a duck to wrap and roll with hoisin sauce … it goes on – and it’s excellent.
LUCY LIU
The CBD’s uber-cool Lucy Liu covers all the bases for an Asian feast.
Executive chef Zac Cribbes serves silky duck wontons, meltingly tender slow-roasted lamb shoulder with Indian green chilli dahl and an irresistibly buttery, flaky roti – and finishes with a ginger-spiked French creme brulee.
All of Lucy’s food is flavour-packed.
ANCHOVY
If the pre-meal snacks – peanuts loaded with crispy bits of chilli, kaffir lime and galangal – don’t have you at hello, the rest of Thi Le’s menu soon will.
A thoroughly modern Melbourne mix of Asian cuisines, dishes here are bang-the-table good.
Take the row of squeaky-fresh raw scallops and tangy persimmon slices anointed with caviar pops and garlic hits, or the wagyu carpaccio, slices so meltingly tender concealing a leek and beansprout salad. Every flavour works.
SUNDA
Sunda’s industrial fit-out might look unfinished, all scaffolding and boarded floors, but with its knockout arsenal of signature dishes, the menu is fully formed.
A mix of Malaysian, Indonesian and Vietnamese dishes twisted with Aussie native ingredients is embedded in the Melbourne menu.
Like the non-negotiable egg noodles, slippery in XO sauce, punchy with the lingering heat of pepperberry and so generously crunchy with chicken crackling.
Heaven.
MINAMISHIMA
Watch as rare and wonderful seafood is sliced, rolled and torched before your eyes at Richmond’s Japanese fine diner Minamishima.
Renowned sushi chef Koichi Minamishima’s tasting menu of 15 or so courses of melt-in-your-mouth nigiri is worth the months-long wait for a ringside pew.
Minamishima pays minute attention to detail in everything he does, whether it’s the tiny scoring on the flamed tako (octopus) flown in from Hokkaido in Japan, the subtly soy-licked toro (tuna belly) from Nagasaki or prawn-flavoured tofu cubes in a delightful dashi broth.
KISUME
Part chablis bar, sushi counter, basement restaurant, exclusive private dining and 12-seat Chef’s Table, Kisume is a modern Japanese restaurant that’s unmistakably Melbourne but with added New York sass.
The deluxe sushi box from a roll call of local fish is an easy win, and the extensive menu ticks off dumplings and sashimi, elegant tempura from the fryer and wagyu from the grill, in a fashion at once familiar and unique.
LONGSONG/LONGRAIN
Nothing beats this double act in Melbourne’s theatre-land.
Downstairs, ever reliable Longrain keeps putting a modern spin on “hot, sour, salty and sweet” fare from South East Asia. Upstairs, golden lantern-lit Longsong supplies “moonshine, music and merriment” around share dishes licked by fire.
CODA
When this basement diner opened in 2009, its ‘mod Asian’ moniker sounded decidedly exotic but Coda doesn’t need that descriptor anymore.
Its ever-changing dishes, devised by peripatetic chef Adam D’Sylva, slip between culinary boundaries like those long boats you see in Vietnam – here a Javanese curry, there a Saigon cutlet with French accents (pomme frites and fromage) along the way.
SUPERNORMAL
Under the same Flinders Lane roof you can punch out a Street Fighter II arcade game, sing karaoke and score Pocky (Japanese biscuit sticks) from vending machines.
Then it’s onto the Chinese/Japanese/Korean cuisine by chef Andrew McConnell, who’s created an expansive menu, home to new favourites and old hits.
MAKAN
But here you’ll find My Kitchen Rules’ 2016 champs, sisters Tasia and Gracia Seger, in the kitchen of their first restaurant.
Growing up in Indonesia and Australia, the sisters’ mother and grandmother inform much of their cooking and Makan – which means “eat” in Indo – is their attempt to elevate Indonesian food here above the usual cheap and cheerful uni-student fare.
ANNAM
Could the city’s best Vietnamese spring rolls be found on the northern cusp of Chinatown?
A whole king prawn, pastry-wrapped and jolted in the fryer, is best folded in a cool lettuce leaf for ultimate crunch and then dunked in a sticky nuoc mam sauce.
What a winner.
Here at chef Jerry Mai’s Annam, no-fuss Cambodian/Vietnamese street food is finger-lickin’ good.
SUN KITCHEN
Unashamedly pitched at the pointiest end of Melbourne dining, Sun Kitchen is the new Sichuan/Cantonese rebrand of what was Albert Park’s fancy fine diner, The Point.
Now it’s two levels of hotpots and dumplings and tanks full of snow crabs and crays, abalone and coral trout, with high-end seafood a focus across the large menu.
Don’t miss the “sauteed milk”, a puffy cloud of whipped milky egg whites in which chunky crabmeat is strewn.
It’s an absolute knockout of a dish.
KAZUKIS
Kazuki’s – Daylesford’s delightful high-end Japanese – has relocated to the gingham-clad heart of Lygon Street.
Kazuki Tsuya himself delivers dishes that make up the five- or seven-course degustation served on Friday and Saturday nights (a la carte available other times) that starts with a handful of snacks that sets the bar high.
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