Flower Drum, Melbourne

Flower Drum is, without a single doubt, the best restaurant in Melbourne (and possibly Australia). An extravagant claim, yes, but if you are sceptical then you are obviously not one of the thousands who have taken that small elevator up to the magnificent dining room to partake in the worlds finest Cantonese cuisine. The King Island crab and prawn dim sum were the best I have ever eaten, and Flower Drum's Peking Duck... well, the word devine comes to mind, also "superb" and deliciously tender". The best in the world. And the service? Simply amazing; the waiters lift the simple task of resetting tables into the realms of performance art. As soon as the water in my glass dropped below a certain level they would be there, refilling it and then disapearing until you once again required their assistance. Perfection on all fronts.

The overall cost was a little pricey, although it can be justafiable considering I had the best meal of my life. Thankyou

As a Hong Kong person, with HK easily the equal if not a better culinary city than Melbourne, growing up on Chinese food personally, not to mention Flower Drum serves HK's interpretation of Chinese food, I believe my ratings are fairly accurate. The excellence in Flower Drum is consistency and best ingredients. Unfortunately flavour is not one of them. The over-hyped Peking Duck scores 8.0/10 only compared to top notch restaurants in HK/Peking. The soy-sauce chicken was dry on several occasions (sauce was great). The sauce for seared-beef was overwhelmingly peppery. Some things I loved include their steamed or pan-fried fish, which were perfect. Otherwise subtlely boiled chinese soup cannot get any better. Fried rice of all flavours were simply the best I have ever eaten in my life. Amongst the chinese immigrants community, most of us are fully aware that Flower Drum DOES NOT COME CLOSE to serving the best chinese food in the world, especially compared to those in HK, Canton or even far away in Japan. It isnt even the best tasting chinese food in Australia, unfortunately other restaurants might have great signature dishes but cannot carry everything else into the equation to make a joint that can wholly compete with Flower Drum's consistency. I give it 17/20. Price wise, it is expensive but if you know anything about cooking methods and ingredients, it is worth every penny knowing that they have spent 100% effort trying to extract the best outcome for the customer.

What a wonderful experience, everything from the food, to the service made the evening truly memorable

one word--awful i am not going to recommand my friends to try this restaurant because the service was poor. and the food was not up to my expectation

This is the stand out restaurant in Melbourne.

for $750 for 4 people i thought it was overpriced