Lee Ho Fook

The name comes from a Warren Zevon line in Werewolves of London and means "good fortune for your mouth." Victor Liong opened the first one on Smith Street in 2013 to channel what he calls his creative angst, and moved it into a Duckboard Place laneway two years later.

Why go

Liong arrived in Australia from Brunei at six, grew up in Sydney, and cooked at Galileo, Mr Wong and Marque. Marque is the one that shows: the snack course is composed, technical and rich, and it is the reason Gourmet Traveller opens its review with a warning rather than a compliment. The kitchen's own position is that it takes "the legacy of deliciousness given to us by generations of Chinese Australians" somewhere personal (Lee Ho Fook), which in practice means Australian producers run through Chinese technique. The wine list is past 120 bins with a Coravin so verticals can pour by the glass, and it carries a page of Chinese wine, which almost nobody does. You can bring your own Monday to Wednesday.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the crispy eggplant in spiced red vinegar. The maltose-glazed Peking duck. The choux pastry bao with mushroom char siu, and the prawn toast under sea urchin with salted egg yolk butter. Then the sweet and sour pork, which arrives coated in pineapple and strawberry and works.
• Avoid: eating the snacks the way you want to. They come first, they are rich, and the big plates are what you booked for. Closed Sunday.

What locals & experts say

• Gourmet Traveller (August 2025): "a smart, witty, 21st-century take on Aussie-Chinese," and a warning that "it's easy to make the rookie error of filling up before you reach the larger dishes." ref
• Liinaa Berry, Star Wine List (2025), a sommelier on the list rather than a critic on the room: "This is Victor Liong's playground, where Chinese flavours get dialled up, refined and thrown into a whole new gear, but without losing their punch." She rates the list as built for drinking rather than for trophy hunters. ref
• Frank Sweet, Time Out Melbourne (2021): on the fried bread with charred spring onion and soft curds, "the bottle green umami-fest of the latter worth the visit alone." His piece describes a set-menu-only format that has since gone back to a la carte. ref
• Besha Rodell, writing for the New York Times, is quoted by the restaurant on its own site: "I wasn't prepared for the meal I ate at Lee Ho Fook... it was also one of the best meals I've eaten in Melbourne." The original piece was not reached, so this is the venue's republication and is labeled that way. ref
• On hats, read the city first. Two hats in the 2026 Good Food Guide went to the SYDNEY Lee Ho Fook at Porter House, under executive chef Brad Guest, in the Sydney guide ref. The Melbourne room's current hat count could not be verified in any reachable source, so this entry does not claim one.

Good to know

• Where: 11-15 Duckboard Place, a laneway off Flinders Lane. Two rooms: downstairs beside the kitchen, upstairs more formal.
• Timing: dinner Monday to Saturday. No lunch.
• Booking: recommended.
• Sites: three. Duckboard Place (this one, since 2015), Marvel Stadium in Docklands (2021, large-format family dishes), and Porter House in Sydney (2025). A review of one is not a review of another.
• Wine: BYO Monday to Wednesday.
• Safety: Victoria publishes no per-venue hygiene rating. Safe Food Victoria's register of court convictions under the Food Act 1984 was read in full on 1 August 2026 and does not list this venue. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. Melbourne has no saved-places export in the repo, so nothing here can be traced to Jeff's own words.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

must-visit — Victor Liong opened a fast Chinese diner on Smith Street in 2013 to burn off creative angst, moved it into a Duckboard Place laneway in 2015, and has spent a decade turning Chinese Australian cooking into something with a point of view rather than a heritage. The evidence for that is current. Gourmet Traveller in August 2025 warned readers off the snacks because they are too good to eat first, which is the most useful sentence written about this kitchen: a choux pastry bao filled with mushroom char siu, prawn toast under sea urchin with salted egg yolk butter, then a maltose-glazed Peking duck and a sweet and sour pork built on pineapple and strawberry. Liinaa Berry, assessing the wine as a sommelier, calls it an important part of Melbourne's culinary landscape, and the list runs past 120 bins with a Coravin and a page of Chinese wine. Chinese cooking is one of the deepest fields in this city, which makes standing out in it harder than standing out elsewhere. Book, sit downstairs by the kitchen, and pace yourself.