Melbourne: Chinatown & Laneways Food Tour, Lunch or Dinner｜Australia

Melbourne hides its best food down laneways you would walk straight past. This small-group walking food tour takes you through Chinatown and the CBD's laneways with a guide who eats through this city for a living, and who builds the route around what is actually good on the day.

You get four to six substantial tastings, chosen on the day rather than read off a fixed menu. Hand-folded dumplings and Michelin-starred yum cha in Chinatown. Regional Chinese street food. Oysters, soft cheeses and Indian dhai puri as you move through the laneways. One drink is included at a laneway bar or cellar door: wine, beer, cocktail or a non-alcoholic option. Come hungry, because this is built to replace a meal, not sit alongside one.

Choose the time that suits your day. The 11am departure runs as your lunch. The 7pm departure runs as your dinner. Same route, same format, different light on the city. Departure times vary by date, so check the calendar for the day you want.

You start at Gordon Reserve on Spring Street, opposite the Hotel Windsor, and finish at Federation Square. The tour covers two to three kilometres on foot across Chinatown, Bourke Street Mall and the laneway network, and runs for about three hours.

Groups are capped at twelve. That cap is the whole point. Your guide has time to answer questions and to tell you the stories behind each stop, including how successive waves of immigration and a network of narrow service laneways turned Melbourne into Australia's food capital. A bigger group gets a script. This one gets a conversation.

Venues shift with the season, with what is open and with who is in the group. Guests consistently single out how much their guide tailored the route around them, swapping stops and stories based on what the group actually wanted to eat.

You will also leave with a list of restaurants, bars and cafes worth returning to for the rest of your stay, picked by someone who is in these venues every week.

Whether this is your first day in Melbourne and you want a well-guided introduction to the food scene, or your fifth visit and you want to go deeper into it, you will see parts of this city you would otherwise walk straight past.