From CBD laneways to high streets, our city is home to an ever-expanding spread of Chinese food, spanning north-eastern skewers, red-hued Sichuan dishes, delicate seafood, and more. These are our top picks.
Good Food Guide reviewers
Melbourne knows good Chinese cuisine – just look at The Age Good Food Guide 2026 Restaurant of the Year Flower Drum, still impressing high-profile regulars, big-name chefs and out-of-town visitors 50 years on.
Beyond the long-running institutions, our city has a deep bench of Chinese culinary prowess. These 10 venues, spanning CBD laneways to suburban main streets, are just the start. Forget sticky lemon chicken or sweet and sour pork. Find dishes hailing from China’s Guangdong, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Yunnan provinces. There are generational delicacies passed down from dumpling masters, recipes coveted for decades, skewered meat, lobsters in tanks, and lazy susans waiting to be spun.
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Lee Ho Fook
Prepare to die for the sea urchin and salted-egg butter prawn toast at Victor Liong’s more than 10-year-old Lee Ho Fook. The laneway restaurant earned two hats and a Critics’ Pick in The Age Good Food Guide 2026 for dishes like crisp Sichuan eggplant akin to praline, and crab-loaded Fujian fried rice. Head to the dining room upstairs if you’re not one for a bar stool.
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1-15 Duckboard Place, Melbourne, leehofook.com.au
Colourful Yunnan
Mushroom is the star of the show at this light-filled and spacious restaurant, which is full of groups exploring the depth and breadth of Yunnan cuisine’s favourite ingredient. With help from staff, it’s easy to cover your table with blue-toned porcelain plates offering a mix of spicy, sour and earthy tastes. Bring a few buddies to best appreciate the feast, then finish with a cup of honeysuckle tea.
826 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, colourfulyunnan.com.au
Flower Drum
It may take weeks to get a table, but our 2026 Restaurant of the Year – now entering its sixth decade – warrants the wait. Juicy, lacquered Peking duck is wrapped tableside in supple crepes warmed over a petite flame, while delicate scallop, mud crab and prawn dumplings bathe in pure golden chicken broth. Try to visit with a group as bookings can be limited for smaller tables.
17 Market Lane, Melbourne, flowerdrum.melbourne
Pounding Rice Bowl
You’ve ordered food, the kitchen has prepared it, and it’s arrived at your table looking lovely. There’s only one thing to do: pick up the provided pestle and pound your meal into a mash. It might be rice with pork mince and braised eggplant, or the premium, slightly sticky wuchang rice from Heilongjiang province in north-east China. Aussie-Chinese dishes also sit alongside dumplings and a fried chicken carcass served with a zingy Sichuan spice salt.
209-211 Russell Street, Melbourne, poundingricebowl.com.au
Nihao Kitchen
The menu at this hatted Kew restaurant is immense: 30 pages covering China from north to south. You’ll want to pre-order the signature pipa duck – roasted, gleaming and spreadeagled to resemble a Chinese lute – and share between a group from the spinning lazy susan. The quality across all dishes here is striking, whether they’re simple or complex, humble or heroic.
298-300 High Street, Kew, nihao-kitchen.space
Chef Wong
This Critics’ Pick restaurant is powered by a belief in honouring legacy, in this case that of Wing Kwong “Chef” Wong, a dim sum master of more than 50 years who died last year. Wong’s daughter, Doris, now carries the torch. It’s a modest venue, but there’s nowhere in Melbourne making dumplings with more integrity. You can even grab some from the freezer to take home.
284A Huntingdale Road, Huntingdale, chefwong.com.au
Oriental Impression Grill
You can practically hear the place – the roaring conversation, the beer bottles clinking – before stepping inside. At this turbo Northern Chinese version of an izakaya, order barbecued meat and seafood skewers from a piece of paper while Googling anatomical terms like larynx, aorta, and soft and hard tendons. Bring a hungry crew and definitely book – it’s usually packed.
370 Victoria Street, Richmond, 03 9429 8883
Red Cliff
Queen Street in the CBD might not spring to mind when you think of regional Chinese food, but it’s home to a restaurant that serves Sichuan and Hunan dishes – plus a little from neighbouring Hubei – to a rare standard. Ruby-red walls are covered with cartoon princesses from bygone dynasties, yellow and red lanterns hang overhead, aching Chinese ballads play. Red Cliff is a lot, but it’s also life-giving in its vitality.
256 Queen Street, Melbourne, instagram.com/redcliffchinese
Dainty on Toorak
The kitchen fires off a 100-plus-page leather-bound menu running from street-style rice puffs to tank-fresh lobster at this hatted Critics’ Pick restaurant. You’ll need an army with you just to make a dent. The true Dainty spirit is imprinted in the Chongqing chilli chicken: an avalanche of Sichuan peppercorns, dried chillies and cleavered wings.
176 Toorak Road, South Yarra, instagram.com/dainty_on_toorak
Dumpling Max
Settle in anywhere at this bolthole and witness the precision pinching happening in the open kitchen. A fleet of composed aunties roll and fill perfectly supple dough with the flavours of north-east China and beyond. Grab a suan mei tang, China’s addictive smoky plum drink, sit back and enjoy golden-bottomed, pan-fried dumplings to a soundtrack of sweet mainland Mandopop.
70 Victoria Street, Carlton, instagram.com/dumpling_max_melbourne
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
