MELBOURNE | A few weeks ago, Healey’s Lane was officially anointed Melbourne’s Koreatown. While it’s true that the area is full of amazing Korean cafes, restaurants, grocery stores, and more, there’s also lots of other good stuff there from elsewhere in Asia, and further abroad. One of these is the recently opened Liyin Rice Roll Master, which I visited for What’s On Melbourne.
Liyin Rice Roll Master is a Guangzhou-based chain founded in 2008 by He Yingbin. It specialises in Cantonese cheong fun aka rice rolls, which originated in Guangdong’s Xi Guan district. Their cheong fun are popular, with over 100 locations in China, and a few in the USA since last year. Rowling Wu, who hails from Guangdong, missed the cheong fun that she enjoyed back home, so decided to take matters into her own hands and bring the brand to Australia.
Everything is made from scratch on site where possible each morning. This includes the delicate rice noodles which are made using a specially imported stone mill that grinds high quality rice into a milky batter, then steamed for a few seconds to produce sheets of noodles. They’re brushed with a house-made soy sauce, and filled to order with your choice of ingredients. The result of this intricate process is worth it.
There’s classic flavours like BPS (beef, shrimp, and pork); and 3 Treasure (beef, pork, and charshu); along with special flavours like beef, pickle, and chilli; and the popular black truffle with prawn. There’s also things like steamed red rice rolls filled with crispy prawn paste; beef ho fun; stir-fried ham, egg, and onion, noodles; braised pork leg on rice; and congee with fillings like seafood, and century egg with pork.
Generous fillings, big wok hei on the noodles, and soy sauce on the side to keep your cheong fun fresh seal the deal. I can confirm, bringing the dishes home after the photoshoot, that most of the food holds up really well for takeaway too. Wash it all down with some classic Cantonese-style lemon iced tea, and you’re sorted.
Liyin Rice Roll Master
Healey’s Lane
Melbourne
Victoria 3000
Australia
Telephone: 0487 314 801
E-mail: n/a
Website
Open
Wed: 5:00pm to 9:30pm
Thu – Mon: 11:00am to 2:30pm, 5:00pm to 9:30pm