These are the best Filipino restaurants in Melbourne right now

Opened by former Rice Paper Sister chef Ross Magnaye with a couple of chef compadres, Serai’s fire-based cooking riffs on his Filipino heritage while playing with the idea of authenticity. The lechon cleaves closest to the original source material: roasted free-range pig is all crackle and squish, enlivened by the tropical addition of pineapple in the spicy-sweet palapa sauce. But elsewhere, Magnaye deviates from the script more. Like with the ‘McScallop’, a cheeky riposte to the golden arches starring a single fried scallop doused in deliriously rich crab fat sauce sandwiched in a toasted pandesal bun. Or the 'Kare Kare' hashbrown, which takes another staple of the fast-food behemoth and adds a fire-roasted peanut sauce, plenty of herby zing and a blizzard of salted duck yolk. 

Tucked away along Franklin Street, the no-frills GJ’s Grill specialises in the Filipino national dish of lechon – you can get small lechon, large lechon, lechon with rice, lechon sisig. But if you don’t feel like spit-roasted pork belly for whatever reason, GJ’s succinct menu also offers other Filipino specialties like grilled bangus (milkfish) on rice, beef tapa (reminiscent of beef jerky) and sinigang (a tamarind-rich sour and savoury soup which, in GJ’s iteration, is made with salmon belly). The pork skewers sell out if you’re not early enough – that’s how good they are. 

True to its name, this takeaway-style Filipino eatery – part of the latest string of restaurants to mushroom amid the rabbit warrens of Melbourne Central’s ground floor – is famed for its chicken inasal, that is grilled chicken seasoned in the Filipino staple ingredient kalamansi, vinegar and annatto seeds. Contrary to its name, however, Inasal Express’s menu is extensive for a hole-in-the-wall – expect pork ribs, bangus and pecho (chicken breast) alongside your choice of heart-shaped rice, chips or salad. Or avail yourself of a silog meal, where every dish comes with rice and an egg – think tapsilog (beef tapa), shanghaisilog (pork spring rolls) and hotsilog (hot dogs). Save room for dessert, specifically the mais con yelo (a shaved ice dessert made with corn kernels, sugar and milk) and the halo halo (akin to a multilayered, crushed ice sundae). 

You can find Barkada Pinoy in two locations across Melbourne: above Shortstop on Sutherland Street and as a pop-up in Highpoint. The décor is simple but cutesy, with an adorned shopfront taking the place of the front counter. As is commonplace at a Filipino restaurant, rice combos are manifold but varied in this case – there are pork skewers, chicken inasal and pork belly but also pork ear skewers, chicken feet skewers and isaw ‘o’ (pork intestine) skewers. The Pinoy spaghetti on the menu is unlike anything you’d taste at your local Italian joint with a tomato sauce sweetened with brown sugar and banana ketchup. Like Inasal Express, Barkada Pinoy does desserts of a similar nature and if you’ve ever wondered what a Filipino breakfast is like, Barkada Pinoy is open from 10am every day. 

Translating from Tagalog to mean ‘variety’, a sari-sari store is one of the many hats Ceree wears as a grocery store, café and restaurant. Start your day with silog – the most popular option seems to be the tapsilog, where thinly slivered beef is serviced alongside garlic rice, salad and a fried egg, or opt for the fusion-forward dish of longanisa benny, an eggs benedict take incorporating Filipino sausage. Move on to the batchoy (pork noodle soup), dinuguan (pork offal stew) and pancit malabon (thick rice noodles in a savoury prawn broth). Don’t go past Ceree’s famed ube (purple yam) latte, best consumed alongside desserts like the ube pastilla (soft and chewy Filipino milk candies), ube keso cake and calamansi crème caramel.

Rice is an inextricable part of Filipino cuisine, but at Migrant Coffee, best friends Melodee Malazarte and Stacey Earsman sandwich Filipino flavours and ingredients (as well as Thai and Maori ones) between bagels. The menu changes seasonably, but expect to see the likes of atsara (Filipino pickled green papaya), banana ketchup, salted caramel coconut jam, halloumi marinated in calamansi and curried chickpeas spread across your classic selection of bagels. A jewel among West Footscray’s brunch destinations, Migrant Coffee is, as its name suggests, an ode to the wave of migrants who have helped shape the face of Melbourne.

Camberwell is perhaps not where you’d first think to venture for Filipino food, but Café Kusina is proving that assumption wrong. The first two columns of Café Kusina’s menu place it in the same nondescript category of most cafes in Melbourne – smashed avo, eggs benedict, big breakfast – but then your eyes catch the words kikiam (shredded fish wrapped in beancurd) and kamote (sweet potato) chips. Turn to the next page and your greatest dreams are confirmed: this is no average café. Take your pick of five silogs, try the tapawarma (a Pinoy spin on shawarma) and don’t miss the best-selling crispy kare kare, which sees a thick savoury peanut sauce blanketing crisp pork belly. Those nostalgic for the flavours of their childhood will find a kindred dish in the ‘happy chicken and spaghetti’, where an immaculate fried chicken is served alongside a Filipino-style spaghetti, where the definitive ingredient of banana ketchup gives it a sweetness you’ll find in no other spaghetti. 

Lutong Pinoy’s second outpost had inauspicious beginnings: after running a successful takeaway shop out of Footscray Market for nine years, owner Narcisa McLeavy opened her Deer Park store. Alas it was February 2020, and the rest we don’t speak of, though it’s worth highlighting that Lutong Pinoy’s adoring customer base kept it afloat. Evoking the feel of a ‘karenderya’ – what Filipinos know to be a roadside café or food stall – Lutong Pinoy’s small confines is packed to the rafters with diners who return for their kare kare with bagoong (a fermented fish or, in some cases, shrimp paste condiment) and their lechon kawali with sukang sawsawan, a spicy vinegar dipping sauce. What’s talked about in the same breath as the food is the service – consistently friendly, chatty and welcoming.  

Decked in splashes of red and green reminiscent of Christmas, this Sunshine gem is well worth a try – portions are generous and dishes are freshly cooked onsite. Patrons can choose to enjoy their meals indoors or out in the courtyard, and apart from an all-day breakfast menu, there are rice combos featuring various preparations of chicken and pork for those with choice paralysis. The dishes that fly out of the kitchen are the lechon kawali, sizzling pork sisig, crispy pata (deep-fried pork leg served with a soy vinegar dipping sauce), and the selection of barbecued meats and seafood. Save space for dessert, namely the leche flan (egg caramel custard), turon (deep-fried banana rolls), halo halo and mais con yelo.

A ‘boodle fight’ is when Filipinos share a meal of delicious ulam (main dishes) with loved ones over a banana leaf-lined table. Eating ‘kamayan-style’ is the traditional Filipino way of eating with your hands and is encouraged at boodle fights, dubbed so due to the competitive nature of these feasts where everyone tries to outeat one another. Weribee’s Pinoy Diner stages family boodle feasts all the time, in addition to their regular menu where the sizzling pork sisig, crispy pata, Pinoy pork barbecue and ube desserts are most popular. With a small adjoining grocer and catering services, Pinoy Diner is a refuge for Filipinos looking for a taste of home away from home as well as those newer to the cuisine.  

Super Rapsa in Dandenong is a go-to for homestyle Filipino dishes in the southeastern suburbs of Melbourne, from pinakbet (a vegetable medley with pork and shrimp paste) and bicol express (pork cooked in a heat-filled coconut sauce) to caldereta (a tomato-based beef stew) and inihaw na pusit (grilled squid stuffed with tomatoes and aromatics). Live music every Friday evening enlivens proceedings, while the owners and staff are known for their warm hospitality. 

Clifton Hill has the incongruous cult favourite Diamond Indian and Hungarian while Fitzroy has Sisig Mix, a restaurant boasting a combination of Filipino and Persian influences. Dotted with fairy lights with an ornate water fountain to boot, the courtyard out the back of the restaurant is where you want to be sitting. Unsurprisingly given its name, sisig is the main feature of the menu and while you can find pork, chicken and tofu variations with the traditional accompaniments of rice and egg, the yoghurt garlic sauce atop is the Persian component. Or you can choose to have the same sisig in a burrito or taco. The other Filipino-inspired dishes on the menu are beef tapa – on fries and in a cheeseburger – crisp chicken wings, and adobo mushroom tacos. 

Askal hasn’t been around for long, but the two-level eatery has already started making waves for its contemporary iterations of traditional Filipino flavours and cooking techniques. Think sizzling pork jowl and abalone sisig, ox tail kare kare dougnuts and grilled scallop inasal. The showstopper dish making the rounds on socials has been the roasted bone marrow, sitting in a claypot of crispy confit garlic rice and caramel-braised oxtail. If that isn’t enough to have you running to Askal, we don’t know what will. The co-founding team of John Rivera, Carlos Consunji, Ralph Libo, Michael Mabuti and Dhenvirg Ugot – proud Filipinos themselves – are also some of the names behind Kariton Sorbetes and Serai, ensuring bold and vibrant Filipino flavours are front and centre in Melburnians’ dining experiences. 

Kariton Sorbetes may not be a restaurant, but it’s Melbourne’s first Filipino ice-creamery and that marks it worthy of inclusion. Every gelato in its arsenal of 25 plus flavours and rotating weekly specials is inspired by a classic Filipino dessert or cocktail. Bestsellers include the purple yam gelato of ube halaya, the cocoa and toasted rice gelato of champorado with its fish sauce ‘salted caramel’ and candied cacao nibs, and the mais con yelo popcorn gelato with sweet and white corn fudge, honey joys and toasted corn husk. Gelato is the name of the game here, but there is also a curated selection of cookie sandwiches, gelato sandwiches and cakes. Having first set up in Footscray, Kariton is slowly growing its empire with outposts in Chinatown and Glen Waverley.