The Old Raffles Place

The 38 Essential Melbourne Restaurants

"Sidestep your way through the kitchen to reach the dining room of the Old Raffles Place, which is charmingly decorated with fairy lights and photos of old Singapore. The owners, wife-and-husband team Carol and Alan Han, met while working in a hotel in their native Singapore, and after long careers in hospitality spanning across Asia and Australia, they opened this restaurant as their retirement project — but two decades later, they’re in their 70s and 80s, and having too much fun to quit. The char kway teow (rice and Hokkien noodles cooked with sweet soy sauce and packed with shrimp, Chinese sausage, and squid) and the Hokkien mee (Hokkien noodles, rice vermicelli, shrimp, squid, and pork belly braised in savory broth) are impeccable. But the crowd favorite might be the char koay kak, also called “carrot cake,” made of radish and rice cakes fried with sweet soy sauce, egg, garlic, bean sprouts, and chile." - Audrey Bourget, Sharlee Gibb