Melbourne’s best BYO restaurants revealed | delicious 50 under $50

Take a night off cooking and bring your favourite bottle to these top restaurants in the city and the suburbs.

Yes that’s right, BYO still exists in Melbourne.

Take a night off cooking and bring your favourite bottle to these top restaurants in the city and the suburbs.

Pinto

231 Exhibition Street, Melbourne | 0451 986 017 | facebook.com/pintomelbourne

An authentic Thai cafeteria rocking a close approximation to a Bangkok back alleyway, Pinto channels a comfort-heavy take on Isaan food. The salty, sour, sweet, spicy and bitter pillars of Thai food are all accounted for on a menu making a specialty of real-deal boat noodles: just choose your noodle and level of beef or pork adventure, from fillet to liver and tripe. Chicken noodles in bitter melon soup will cure whatever ails you, while the changing roster of specials, like southern-style yellow curry with shrimp and snapper, keep nearby expat uni students on a perennial taste trip back to the homeland.

Cuisine Thai

BYO Yes

Lunch Mon-FriDinner , Dinner daily

Annie Vu and Nam Nguyen have run Co Thu Quan for eight years. Picture: Rebecca Michael

Co Thu Quan

12/10 Droop St, Footscray | 9191 6469 | (no website)

What started as a small shop in the Footscray Market has flourished into one of Footscray’s best kept secrets for authentic Vietnamese food.

Annie Vu and her chef husband Nam Nguyen have been running Co Thu Quan for about eight years, serving streetfood snacks such as Vietnamese crepes, fried fish balls, rice paper rolls and larger bowls like chicken pho and stir-fried chilli lemongrass and tofu. The space jams up to 40 people inside its bare-bones dining room, with 20-odd seats spilling on to Droop St when the weather calls for a few ice-cold cans of Vietnam’s finest from the fridge.

Cuisine Vietnamese

BYO Yes

Lunch and Dinner daily

Laksa King’s Esmond Wong is responsible for Melbourne’s laksa love affair.

Laksa King

791 High St, Reservoir | 0492 818 032 | lapintareservoir.com.au

If anyone should be responsible for Melbourne’s laksa love affair, it’s Esmond Wong.

The Malaysian-born chef first introduced the city to Southeast Asia’s spicy soup in a Flemington arcade in 1998. Almost 25 years later, he’s grown the Laksa King empire to three stores, including a larger suburban Glen Waverley outpost that’s perfect for groups and communal dining. Small snacks like pork dumplings and curry puffs will get you started, before slurping the noodley signature laksas that won’t cost you more than $20. Other Asian soups, including har mee, and larger shares such as Hainanese chicken round out the offering.

Cuisine Malaysian

Lunch and Dinner daily

ShanDong MaMa

Shop 7-8 Mid City Arcade, 200 Bourke St, Melbourne | 9650 3818 | facebook.com/shandongmama

It seems Mama really does know best, especially when it comes to dumplings. This family-run Melbourne favourite is tucked inside an arcade in Chinatown and serves up traditional recipes from Yantai on China’s Shandong Peninsula. Seafood may be a specialty of this cheap eats haven, but for a more parochial dish, locals may want to opt for the seafood and chicken-filled Melbourne or Aussie Lamb pot stickers. Or think outside the dumpling wrapper and go for ShanDong specialties, such as pork-stuffed fried lotus roots or extra-large bao. Eat in, or takeaway dumplings, pot stickers and buns to make at home.

Cuisine Chinese

BYO Yes

Lunch and Dinner daily

Soi 38 takes Thai street food to a new level in Melbourne. Picture: Tony Gough

Soi 38

38 Mcilwraith Place, Melbourne | 0403 547 144 | soi38.com

Soi 38, the bare-bones Thai eatery by Andy Buchan and chef Vherachid “Top” Kijthavee, brings wok-tossing fun to the bottom of a multi-storey car park. Think street food snacks and lesser-known Thai delicacies, such as boat noodles. Go traditional with a noodle soup made from a blood-based broth, or indulge in bites of fried chicken, papaya salad and kingfish ceviche. Soi 38 recently took over an adjacent garage to pack in more hungry mouths, and installed a bottle shop nearby specialising in natural wines that you can take for dinner with no corkage. Now that’s something we can raise a glass to.

Cuisine Thai

BYO Yes

Lunch Mon-Sat, Dinner daily

Teta Mona

100A Lygon St, Brunswick East | 9380 6680 |obee.com.au/tetamona

Dinner d

The vibes are high at this pumping Lebanese restaurant, which feels more like eating at the house of a good friend who just happens to be an excellent Levantine cook. Run by brothers Antoine and Bechara Taouk and named in honour of their grandmother (“teta”) Mona, it’s a family feast scenario in which no one is going home hungry. Za’atar-dusted fried cauliflower, fluffy falafel in pita and filo-wrapped lamb cigars segue to herby beef kofte and spiced chicken with wild rice and buttered almonds. It’s a world of choice, but the keenly valued $45 banquet will help the decision-making process.

Cuisine Lebanese

BYO Yes

Dinner daily

Yuni’s Kitchen

251 High St, Northcote | 0455 337 666 | yuniskitchen.com.au

A surprise package hiding behind the bluestone Northcote Uniting Church, Yuni’s Kitchen is synonymous with soulful Indonesian food conjured up by Yuni Kenwrick and her quiver of family recipes. The colourful cafe is perfumed by spices from the open kitchen, the olfactory calling cards of universal favourites such as beef rendang and gado gado, nasi goreng and a host of laksas. It’s also worth expanding your horizons with the bakwan – corn and coriander fritters – and the fried tofu and vegetable snack known as tahu isi sayur. If the weather’s fine, the tables in front become Northcote’s most hotly contested real estate.

Cuisine Indonesian

BYO Yes

Lunch Sat, Dinner Tue-Sat