The best Chinese restaurants in Melbourne

Cult institution Dainty Sichuan Food has mushroomed in different locations across Melbourne, but its flagship shop in South Yarra remains the OG – the chilli is hot and the Sichuan pepper is tinglingly, numbingly fresh. Don’t leave without trying the boiling fish in golden basin (surrounded by a sea of Sichuan peppers), the deceptively named fish flavour eggplant (it’s vegan), the fiery mapo tofu and the delicately piquant cumin lamb slices. It’s way up there with the best Sichuan we’ve ever had the pleasure of burning our mouths on. 

The dumplings at Din Tai Fung are folded in a lab-like, glass-walled space, cunningly designed to turn an entire restaurant’s worth of diners into Pavlov’s dogs. The signature xiao long bao – the steamed soup dumplings that are pleated to a perfect 18-fold pucker – are all soupy explosion and juicy pork filling, and must be eaten with the non-negotiable accompaniments of ginger slivers and a slosh of black vinegar. They’re so good that the truffle versions with a sliver of the good stuff are almost redundant.

Genuine home-style Shandong cuisine doesn't get better than in this little shopping arcade dumpling den, which now has a mini outpost off Flinders Lane, too. The family-run restaurant is producing food with unparalleled freshness and flavour. Our favourites are the signature fish dumplings (a loose mince of oily mackerel, fragrant with ginger, coriander root and chives), the vegan zucchini dumplings enlivened by fried tofu and spring onion, and the Melbourne dumplings, which combine a medley of seafood with chicken mince, parsley and garlic. 

With ‘steamed buns’ in the restaurant name, you can’t go past Yulongfu’s xiao long bao – made using an ancestral recipe passed down through co-owner Emily Liu’s family since 1904. Sure you could get the classic pork xiao long bao or you could get it with a flourish of black truffle or the fanciful addition of crab. Afterwards, move on to the pipis in XO sauce or go all out and share the sweet and sour barramundi, drunken chicken and deep-fried ice cream for dessert, of course. 

Be sure to have your order ready when you make it to the counter – everything moves quickly at this ubiquitous Melbourne chain. Lanzhou’s various shopfronts serve up authentic Lanzhou beef noodle soup with hand-stretched-to-order noodles and rich soups that are pure, concentrated beef flavour. Our pick is the braised beef noodle soup that features melt-in-your-mouth braised beef chunks along with the special chilli oil, coriander and radish.

Biang Biang is home to springy, long and flat hand-pulled wheat noodles tossed in accompaniments like stewed pork, tomato and egg, slow-cooked beef and a ton of chilli oil. The fact that Biang Biang is perennially packed speaks to its appeal. The namesake noodles are the must-order, but if you’re feeling like something different or can’t process gluten, there are rice noodles served cold as well as vermicelli. 

It’s been a while. Maybe 35 years. Maybe 36. Maybe more. The exact figure is lost to the mists of time. When it comes to putting a date on Supper Inn, let’s just say it threw open its doors around the time when Malcolm Fraser was prime minister, which means it’s reached the restaurant year equivalent of the Qing dynasty. The menu is long, but make a beeline for the chicken congee flecked with ginger and accompanied by Chinese doughnuts, the soothing minced pork, eggplant and salted fish hotpot, or the glistening roast meats. 

David’s has long been Melbourne’s go-to spot for Shanghai cuisine, first starting as a tea store on Chapel Street before becoming the place it is today. David's signature dishes are inspired by the cuisine of Zhouzhuang, a rural riverside town in Shanghai. Crowd favourites include the luxe crackling pork san choi bao served with seasonal vegetables and a hoisin glaze, and a classic Peking duck served with cucumber and leek. The mapo tofu dumplings and salted duck dumplings are great options if you’re looking to branch out from your usual order of prawn dumplings.

This bustling first-floor Cantonese restaurant is renowned for its seafood-forward dishes. Tables are large, so big group catch-ups or extended family gatherings are usually conducted here, with ginger and scallion stir-fried lobster over egg noodles and winter melon soup crowning each table. Yum cha occurs daily, and alongside more traditional dishes you can find wu gok (fried taro dumplings) stuffed with a creamy chicken filling rather than the usual pork gravy, and orange-tinted golden lava buns (steamed buns filled with a sweet-savoury runny salted egg yolk custard).

Secret Kitchen is recognisable by its curved fish tank on the corner of Little Bourke and Exhibition Streets (signifying that it specialises in seafood), but it punches above its weight in the yum cha department, too. Secret Kitchen falls under the China Bar umbrella, and this two-storey Cantonese restaurant is the place to go when you’re in the mood for a big feed. You have to book in for yum cha on the weekends or you will be turned away. All your old favourites are here, but with a twist: sticky har gow with king prawns, siu mai with abalone, and steamed rice rolls with scallops and black truffle.  

Searching for Sichuan dishes in a neon-lit atmosphere? Chef David Li is your man with dishes that will tickle your tastebuds with an immense concentration of flavour and spice. The tomato sauce barramundi is greater than the sum of its parts, while the charcoal barbecue section, from which you can take your pick of chargrilled seafood, vegetables, meat and offal, is a highlight. 

Arguably the overlord of malatang in Melbourne, Dragon Hot Pot has franchised aggressively over the past few years, with 11 stores now open between Springvale and the city. Chief among them is this snug Russell Street outpost that's open late every night. Choose any combination of meat, seafood, noodles, tofu and vegetables to be cooked in broths ranging from the signature malatang to the 12-hour-steeped bone marrow broth or the vegan malatang. 

Crown Melbourne’s upmarket Chinese restaurant is a go-to for many a special family occasion. With a focus on locally sourced meats and fresh seafood, Silks serves up high-quality dishes such as dim sum, barbecue, multi-regional noodle and rice dishes, as well as some seriously tasty desserts. The baked crab shell with parmesan cheese is a rich and indulgent way to begin your meal, as are the black truffle mushroom spring rolls. The roasted black cod with osmanthus honey is a smoky, ingenious take on char siu pork and the tender Valley Black Angus beef tenderloin with honey and black pepper sauce is a house specialty. Finish your meal on a special note with the sesame crème brûlée served with a sesame tuile and refreshing mango sorbet.

Extravagantly decked out with a grand sweeping staircase and a suspended steel dragon to boot, Panda Hot Pot is perhaps the most ostentatious backdrop against which to enjoy hot pot in Melbourne. The famous global franchise has wowed Melbourne diners with its signature 12-hour broth, its endless condiment station and a menu boasting close to 100 ingredients – plant eaters need not fret as there are plenty of vegetarian and vegan options, too. If you have space after, there’s a soft serve machine ready to meet all your sweet tooth needs. 

From the same people that brought Melburnians the much-loved St Kilda institution, Lau’s Family Kitchen, comes Benyue Kitchen. The word is out that some of Melbourne’s best suburban Canto can be found behind this unassuming brown brick façade in Aberfeldie. Many of Lau’s favourites are on the menu, from the lamb spring rolls and the siu mai made with Queensland prawns to the salt and pepper squid – a lesson in the beauty of a clean fry. 

One of the first restaurants to introduce Box Hill to north-western Chinese fare was the family-owned Shaanxi-Style Restaurant. The use of sweet and earthy spices is a common part of Shaanxi cuisine and punctuates meat-centric dishes such as the pancakes with ground cumin beef, lamb noodle soup and skewers of chicken wings. It also serves the region-specific rou jia mo, otherwise known as Chinese hamburgers – rounds of crisp, grilled wheat bread that are split in half and stuffed with your choice of meat.

There are 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang in China – they speak their own language, more similar to Turkish than Mandarin, and they’re ethnically closer to people who live in Central Asian nations. Their food is unlike anything you’ll find at a stock-standard Chinese restaurant, but you can give it a try at Footscray stalwart Karlaylisi. Expect läghmän (stir-fried hand-pulled noodles), manti (a type of Uyghur dumpling stuffed with either beef or lamb) and cumin lamb skewers, one of Karlaylisi’s bestsellers.