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It’s Friday night and Potluck is pumping. Grown-ups are sitting at the communal
table on church pews while kids in basketball uniforms bounce around waiting for dumplings to take the edge off fierce post-game hunger. Three women share a
bottle of BYO grenache: it’s perfect with the sticky, black-bean beef noodles. In a nook at the back, a serious young couple sip date tea and spoon mapo tofu over rice. A local dad comes in to collect takeaway, picking his way through the small, thrumming dining room. “All Katie can talk about is the prawn toast,” he says. I hear you, Katie.

Through an oversized service window, owner Esther Sun is at the wok station, flames darting, steel clattering. A food enthusiast and shoestring entrepreneur, Sun built this place around memories of family potluck dinners where everyone brings a dish and the chaos of busy lives settles into a mood of fond camaraderie.

These are meals to gather around and share while chatting and relaxing: don’t analyse, just eat.

Sun draws upon various strands of culture and cuisine: her Beijing-born dad and his fondness for sheep brain, her Xinjiang-bred mum, where it’s more about lamb skewers over charcoal and hand-pulled noodles, and Uncle Tong, who’s famous in the family for his fried chicken. She’s not an offal fan, but the other influences shine through her Chinese-ish menu, as does time working in Japanese joints, such as cool Balaclava izakaya Bounty of the Sun.

That prawn toast uses fluffy Japanese shokupan bread to support a prawn mousse flavoured with ginger, garlic and sesame. It’s golden and crunchy, an easy win. Esther’s mum, Rita, makes the sweet, juicy, pork dumplings, which are pan-fried to serve potsticker-style, six dumplings held together by a pretty, lacy fringe. Cucumber is smashed with black vinegar and soy dressing, an essential fresh foil for more intense dishes, such as the lamb backstrap, marinated in coriander and cumin and stir-fried with Szechuan pepper.

A seafood dish channels old-school suburban Chinese with a base of crisp egg noodles topped with king prawn, scallop and barramundi in a lovely, gentle, gloopy sauce.

Ovens aren’t standard equipment in Chinese kitchens, but there are some clever, no-bake desserts by pastry chef Veronica Topcu. Tiramisu is ubiquitous: her deep-purple version is a new spin. It’s made with ube, a coloured yam that’s turned into a jam and layered with ladyfinger biscuits and mascarpone to create
a dark midnight cloud of a dessert. Like all the dishes here, it channels nostalgia and gives it a cute tweak.

These are meals to gather around and share while chatting and relaxing: don’t analyse, just eat. Esther and Rita Sun dove headfirst into hospitality when they spontaneously decided to open Mum’s Burger Kitchen next to a Dan Murphy’s carpark in Boronia in 2015. They schooled themselves there before selling in 2023. Quickly bored, Esther decided she was ready to do an Asian restaurant and found a tired, old Chinese place on this site which she renovated at night with hardly any money before opening last August.

I wondered if her liquor licence was stalled in planning like so many are but no, she’s still saving up for the application. That’s how tight things are in independent restaurants these days.

Meantime, she’s serving a grateful community and providing a supportive environment for her small team, which seems emotionally invested in delivering a cosy, warm experience. Potluck is the name, jackpot is the feeling.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine