Cantonese home cooking meets fine dining at Melbourne omakase restaurant Dom

Tucked away on a quiet street in Southbank, Melbourne, is yet another Cantonese restaurant. But this time, there are no lazy Susans, no clamorous dim sum trolleys and none of the sprawling banquet halls you would expect in Hong Kong-style spots. Instead, just 10 seats line an elegant counter where diners watch and listen to two chefs sharing stories of a home far away, flavours from which define the 10-course tasting menu. This is Dom, the personal project of Dominic Li, the founder of the now closed international dessert chain Dessert Kitchen and co-owner of Hong Kong-style eatery Tuan Tuan, which still operates in the Philippines. “In Melbourne, for Cantonese-type restaurants, there are only a few that are doing something different,” Li says. “In foreign countries, most Chinese restaurants are still selling the typical stuff, and I thought I could make something different: Cantonese fine dining.” Born in Hong Kong and raised in Sydney, Li studied criminology at university – a degree he now calls “a waste of money” – before the gravitational pull of the family business proved too strong. With restaurants on both sides of the family, Li essentially grew up in a kitchen, yet he never set foot in culinary school. “I didn’t have any formal training at all,” he says. “I was in the kitchen for as long as I could remember.” The lack of a diploma hardly held him back: after returning to Hong Kong in 2005, he spent nearly two decades helping his family grow their restaurant empire, opening Japanese and Chinese eateries. He went on to launch the Dessert Kitchen chain, eventually bringing it to Melbourne in 2016, and Tuan Tuan in 2018. He also had a stint working part-time in kitchens while studying in Japan, an experience that infused his cooking with Japanese techniques. But by 2022, Li was ready for a change and Melbourne, with its more relaxed rhythm, called him back. He tested the waters with a temporary Japanese restaurant, Stories of Nooool, in Carlton, but something clicked while scanning the city’s dining landscape: for all its Asian food credentials, Melbourne was relatively short on progressive Cantonese fine dining. The original spark for the omakase format came from the Cantonese-banquet-style restaurants where families typically visit for large celebrations like weddings or homecomings. “Whenever we eat at those places, we always have so many dishes to share,” Li says. “My whole concept was to adjust the portions smaller, so you can actually taste everything.” In practice, this means a set, multicourse journey – the current menu is the fourth in under a year – and draws from Li’s own nostalgia, as well as a growing obsession with the vanishing recipes of his childhood in Hong Kong. A signature from an earlier menu reimagined a Cantonese home-cooking staple: coral trout in sweetcorn sauce, using premium Australian fish and applying a Japanese-influenced finesse. “It’s very local. We often make this at home, and you can find this taste at a dai pai dong,” Li says. More recently, Li has been playing with “two-in-one” creations that marry iconic Hong Kong ingredients – such as a pineapple bun meeting a rice dumpling in one dessert, and steamed eel sitting atop a savoury pork patty. Diners tell him his food tastes exactly like their grandmothers’ cooking. Dom’s drink programme matches the food’s intricacy. Alongside a concise list of wine and sake – including Chinese wine pairings – the restaurant offers a five-stage “Celestial Tea Journey” curated by Kuura, an independent speciality tea company based in Melbourne. The journey moves from delicate white teas through to bold pu’erhs and velvety blacks, each designed to act as a palate cleanser and flavour amplifier. Li says they are easier to work with than other drinks. “Raw pu’erh matches my food perfectly. It pairs better than wine, which has its own sweetness and sourness that can contradict the dishes.” The biggest challenge, Li says, lies in sourcing despite using seasonal menus. For example, Cantonese cooking prizes live seafood for steaming, but in Australia, “80 per cent of seafood is frozen, most live seafood gets exported.” He compensates by shopping at markets daily, buying only what he needs for that evening to ensure the freshest quality. There is no stockpiling, no freezer full of backup. “It is almost like cooking at home,” he says. “Like having a dinner party every night.” The dinner party atmosphere is cultivated by the room itself. With just three staff in total – Li, his co-owner Vito Cheng, and one front-of-house – the operation is almost impossibly lean. Li stays mostly in front of guests, narrating the dishes and watching reactions, while Cheng handles the heavier back-kitchen work. Their partnership is one of those accidents of the hospitality industry. Cheng was not a chef but a floor manager at Li’s izakaya in Hong Kong’s Hung Hom area, until a staff lunch revealed his unexpected talent for cooking pasta. “In our industry, every time we have lunch break, we would pick someone to cook for us. When it was [Cheng’s] turn, I was surprised by his talent,” Li says. He saw a blank canvas, someone easier to teach than an experienced cook set in their ways. When Li decided to move back to Melbourne, he asked Cheng to come. The rest is a shared leap of faith. “We are just creating the taste from our heritage. Since I was born in Hong Kong, everything is based on my memories. Those tastes and feelings are very remarkable,” he says. “I’m just trying to recreate those experiences and emotions.” However, not every memory translates seamlessly. Li’s first menu featured an almond fish maw soup, a milky, delicately sweet classic that is a litmus test for the Hong Kong palate. “Some of the Western customers had a big reaction to it,” he says with a laugh. “They thought, ‘This is strange, this is not food.’ There is definitely a fine balance when it comes to finding what could be relatable or too niche.” He has tempered the menu slightly, finding a balance between the uncompromising flavours of his childhood and audience needs. “I need to find something familiar for them to recognise the taste of home.” Dom, Shop 1/58 Clarke Street, Southbank, Melbourne, Australia

Cantonese home cooking meets fine dining at Melbourne omakase restaurant Dom

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Dominic Li takes his memories of home-made food and combines them with his Japanese culinary experience at the progressive restaurant

Dominic Li takes his memories of home-made food and combines them with his Japanese culinary experience at the progressive restaurant