Time Out Melbourne never writes starred reviews from hosted experiences – Time Out covers restaurant and bar bills for reviews so that readers can trust our critique.
Asian-inspired, Asian fusion, modern Asian restaurants – whatever you want to call them – are familiar to Melbourne diners. Longrain and Gingerboy were early adopters way back when the focus was on rendering these cuisines ‘approachable’, Chin Chin and Supernormal inspired queues around the block in the 2010s, and the Hotel Windsor empire of Sunda, Aru and Parcs further upped the ante. But I’d argue Lygon Street stalwart Lagoon Dining – outlier in a sea of Italian restaurants – is the best of them.
Started up by Ezard trio Ned Trumble, Keat Lee and Chris Lerch, Lagoon Dining is consistently tantalising our tastebuds with some of the most considered and punchiest contemporary takes on classic dishes. If you’re fixated with labels, Lagoon would be best categorised under that all-encompassing moniker ‘pan-Asian’. Very few dishes hew to the traditional. Yet true Southeast and East Asian influences are apparent everywhere, from the dishes Lagoon chooses to spotlight to the condiments they incorporate into said dishes – think sambal belacan, white pepper togarashi, gochujang, Chinkiang vinegar.
The vibe is contemporary 70s with whitewashed exposed brick walls, black granite and lush curtains demarcating one space from the next. Co-owner and front-of-house manager Lerch is a wonder – all it takes is for you to have visited Lagoon more than once for him to remember you, and like the best of them, he anticipates your needs before they become apparent.
If you’ve been visiting Lagoon since it opened its doors, you’ll know some things remain constant despite its ever-changing menu.
Hand-cut into uniform thin slivers and blanched to al dente perfection before they’re flash fried over the fierce heat of a wok, the crowd-pleasing hot and sour shredded potato remains the most well-balanced iteration of the classic Sichuan dish tu dou si that I’ve tasted in Melbourne. If we had to nominate the best drinking snack in Melbourne, this would be a top contender.
Shot through with the sharp, savoury heat of togarashi white pepper and dipped in the accompanying tonkatsu sauce, the brined and double-fried chicken – like jumbo popcorn chicken, but fancier – is unmissable with its incredibly crisp coating and juicy meat.
The charcoal-roasted char siu has never not been on the menu and there’s a reason why – sliced neatly into thin slivers and glazed with honey, the barbecued pork is only bettered by one thing: the oily, savoury spring onion relish accompanying it.
Tiny oblongs of pickled baby cucumbers sitting on a bed of whipped, spiced silken tofu and drizzled with Lagoon’s housemade fragrant chilli oil is the perfect way to kickstart your meal – light, fresh and flavourful.
Beef tartare was at risk of disappearing from menus around Melbourne after being deemed a ‘high-risk’ food by health authorities in the spring of 2023, but thankfully it’s still making an appearance at Lagoon. While its current iteration doesn’t scale the previously lofty heights of Lagoon’s ‘hot and numbing’ beef tartare served alongside Chinese doughnut, it’s still a textural delight with tiny glutinous rice cracker balls scattered across. Flavour-wise, it's a simultaneous mix of piquant, rich and tart with the sambal vinaigrette and crème fraiche. Just wonderful.
This same interplay between dairy and chilli reoccurs in the stracciatella dish. Swimming in a pool of chilli sesame oil, the stretched fresh curd has notes of Sichuan peppercorns – a joy when mopped up with a torn-off chunk of Chinese doughnut.
The tender-as-can-be skewered octopus blanketed in housemade sambal belacan threatens to be overwhelmed by the fiery salty pungency of Malaysia’s favourite condiment but when the sambal tastes this good, who’s complaining?
The ox tongue crepe might have the more unadventurous among your group quaking, but gently coerce them to order it nonetheless because it’s a highlight of Lagoon’s current menu.
Lagoon’s salted fish fried rice – fashioned from overnight Toyama grains – is everything a good fried rice should be: fluffy and disparate, shot through with the saltiness of crisp fried salted anchovies, and abundant in distinct flavours (in this case, bird’s eye chilli pounded with garlic and butter and the luxuriant strands of morning glory.)
For a taste of the sea, the rolled rice flake noodles – slippery, hollow tubes of cheung fun – are fresh, light and salty with a peppery heat that radiates outwards after each bite. Cooked in a comforting prawn and chicken stock and topped with dill – a herb you don’t often see in Asian cuisines – this dish is a winter warmer.
Akin to a Korean take on gnocchi and every bit as sumptous, the pillowy potato dumplings swimming in a hot and sour sauce of doubanjiang and ‘fish-fragrant sauce’ (a vegan Sichuan condiment, despite its name) are new to Lagoon’s menu.
Lagoon excels at vegetarian dishes – anyone remember their thunder tea tofu? – and the wobbly, silken tofu-reminiscent clam egg custard is further proof. A take on the classic Chinese dish of steamed eggs, Lagoon’s is enlivened by the addition of preserved black beans.
Brined and twice-fried, the salt and pepper crispy chicken leg topped with a garlic and green chilli relish is finger-licking good.
Lagoon’s desserts are a consistently sublime blend of the east and west, and the best part is, they evoke something different for everyone. The cinnamon mochi gives some of us of pear cake, others are reminded of the gelatinous consistency of Malaysian kuih. The huge dollop of yoghurt foam is a nice touch, inspired by Lerch’s travels to a hatted restaurant in Sydney.
Not long after opening, Lagoon had to weather the storm of the pandemic, ingeniously branching out into takeaway feasts and a housemade selection of condiments. As it continues to reinvent itself each year and reinvigorate its reliably excellent pan-Asian fare, it deserves far more accolades than it’s gotten so far.