Follow the cobblestone road to a large red neon-lit sign and you’ll be in the Asian street food playground of Michael Lambie, Zac Cribbles and Scott Borg. For three years now, Kitchen & Bar has charmed Melbournites by giving customers a taste representation of their own Asian adventures through Bangkok, Shanghai and Taipei. The result is a menu that sings to Thai and Vietnamese flavours and borrows Cantonese, Japanese and even Korean notes – so that means hits of hot, sour, salty and sweet.
The buzzing venue offers booth-style and communal seating but if you think Lucy Liu has a secret stake in this restaurant, we’ll let you down gently; the team maintains, “Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” However, the red neon lights and low-lit dining area seems to give off a very Charlie’s Angels vibe, even if they weren’t really meaning to.
The menu is all designed to share, including smaller snacks, sides, dumplings and buns, plus hearty curries, mains and larger plates of seafood and meat – basically, there’s a lot to choose from. Light starters include kingfish sashimi with toasted coconut, comforting plates of Peking duck dumplings and Korean fried chicken buns.
Then there's the dialed-up flavour favourites of drunken chicken, short rib rendang curry (definitely order the roti) and their hot-to-trot signature Korean pork hock. The hock is marinated, slow-cooked, then flash-fried for added crispiness and served with an apple and kimchi salad, pancakes and hoi sin. As Cribbles says, “it is a real signature of Lucy Liu and even contemplating taking it off the menu causes riots in our own kitchen.”
The quirk comes in the form of hologram menus, sweet and spicy cocktails and the upbeat eclectic playlist. If you’re prone to indecision, then let Lucy choose and go all-in with their tasting menu, which will have your buds border-hopping without budging from your seats. And yes, they take bookings.
Follow a cobblestone road to a large red neon-lit sign. Source: Lucy Liu
Wok-fried local calamari has layers of different textures. Source: Lucy Liu
The pork hock is marinated, slow-cooked then flash-fried and served with an apple and kimchi salad, pancakes and hoi sin. Source: Lucy Liu
23 Oliver Lane, Melbourne
