T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year: Flower Drum

Chinatown, Melbourne

If these ducks could quack. In 2025 the grand dame of Cantonese fine-dining turned 50, a truly remarkable innings for any restaurant, let alone one once considered an underdog in a Euro-centric fine-dining scene.

The food is just as breathtaking as it was in 1999 when it won its first Good Food Guide Restaurant of the Year award. It would retain that title four of the next six years, its menu a study in luxury seafood and roast meats turned out with the featherlight touch of executive chef Anthony Lui and his team. It’s a tradition they continue today.

Speaking of tradition, waitstaff clad in black vests and bowties roam that vast red carpet just as they have for generations, greeting regulars by their first names, carving ducks at the table and unlocking off-menu specials for bucket-listers.

The clientele? Truly diverse. Tradies, pollies, peacocks, grandparents – they’re all here, united in their reverence for that particular school of southern Chinese finesse many attempt but few perfect.

Flower Drum is the restaurant that put our city’s Chinese food on the map: a standard-bearer for half a century and a cultural landmark that’s as Melbourne as the Yarra. Here’s to another 50.