Spice Temple

Tried the Yum Cha buffet lunch and it was delicious! Staff was very friendly — atmosphere was great — and the food was amazing!
I also had a ginger beer (all their drinks are made in house) and it was delicious!
Overall, 5 big stars!

Great service and the music was superb! A little annoyed that I had to ask twice to taste a bottled beer as was not familiar with most of them. Food was fantastic! Will definitely return

Very cool restaurant with a warm interior feel that makes it great for a night to impress.
Food is fantastic but can be overly fancy on the description
The chillies arent hot. they have definitely westernized the neaning of hot.
Pork belly was slightly oily but hey its pork belly
Service is very high end yet prices are not for what they offer. i dont mean cheap i mean just not as expensive as they could be for the full offering.
Just do it!

I’ve been to Spice Temple four times since it opened. My recent visit is likely to be my last for a while. The first thing that jumps to mind whenever someone mentions Spice Temple is how freaking dark it is in there. It is located riverside at Southbank and completely wastes this prime location with window coverings resembling hanging two by fours, effectively covering any chance of a view. Or light. Trying to read the menu is frustrating. Vampires could live here happily in any season.
I gave this feedback to the restaurant on my third visit. I reminded them that on my first visit, the waiter was so blinded by the dark that he ran into my chair and tipped an entire jug of ice and water down my back. Refreshing. Was not what I said at the time.
I received a polite response advising that this feedback had been given before, however the restaurant was modern, atmospheric and edgy as is the lighting. Ok then. If you visit, make sure you have a light on your phone if you want to read the menu or leave your party to feel your way downstairs to the toilets. This place is not lighting the dark. There will be no taking back the night here. I’m not kidding. BYO light.
Moving on (finally), reception staff haven’t been great on any of the visits. Not particularly friendly or efficient. Table staff are friendly and helpful. The food for the most part is quite nice. The bao are delicious as is the bang bang chicken. Portion sizes are decent. I love the mango pudding with condensed milk Chantilly cream. This place has potential. It just doesn’t live up to it for me.

Love the décor of this place. This is my second visit and I think we ordered too much food but always room for dessert.
Starting with a cocktail
Spicy Fried squid with cabbage salad (and its spicy)
Olive wood smoked Mackerel (OMG so good)
Lamb Dumplings
Cumin Lamb with bread pockets
Stir fried mushroom
Black sesame cake with lime granita, lemon curd
Tea
The service was impeccable, the waitress we had seems to know when we need her. My dining guest loves his spicy food and he enjoyed the food thoroughly.

Second visit the first when just open — wonderful and beyond expectation — second visit some 6 months later someone has dropped the ball. Neil Perry’s use of the best possible ingredients and excellent service have my highest recommendations — but the dishes were spoilt by being too salty and oily destroying the natural flavour of the excellent ingredients. It is hard keeping a high standard but attention to detail is essential if people have high expectations and prepared to pay a high price for their meal. Not with standing that the Port Phillip Bay Scollops were worth the visit and top marks to the chef that prepared that.

If it wasn’t so cool and priced to match, I’d give this place an extra star. But honestly, pricing aside, what’s not to like? The food is good, as is the ambience (once seated). The entrance process feels a little too stand offish for my liking, but the staff were friendly and welcoming, even if the whole reception-​desk style of entry design isn’t. The menu choices seem many and varied and made it tough to choose without feeling like i’m going to miss out. One thing is for sure, dining here feels like you’ve dined out.

Part of the Rockpool empire, I did not think Spice Temple would live up to the hype, but was pleasantly proven wrong. It will hit your wallet a bit, but still well worth a visit. Dumplings might be $ 10+ for 3 small ones, but man are they tasty.
All the sauces and spices are just exceptional (you’d hope so, considering the name) and escalate the tastes to a whole ‘nother level. Not ‘hot’ spicy either, just delicious spicy that leaves your mouth with that nice tingling sensation long afterwards.
Best go with a group where you can order a ton of dishes and get to taste a large variety of things. We did, and not a single dish disappointed. Will be back.

This used to be one of my favourite restaurants in Melbourne. A highlight was getting down there and indulging at this place. Every time I would order the hot and numbing duck.
This evening was my final visit. Neil Perry’s ever decreasing standards have washed over Spice Temple in Melbourne — it now ranks amongst the most disappointing restaurant experiences along with Rockpool in Sydney.
The service used to be impeccable — the table items (bowls, spoons, chopsticks) used to look brand new, and the food used to be sublime.
Now I feel like I might as well head to a cheap and cheerful greasy spoon in Chinatown. The food is just as good, the service just as aloof, and the price is much more reasonable.
The staff were … There. That’s as much as I can offer. They weren’t particularly useful for anything and didn’t spend a lot of time doing much. Here’s your seat, here’s your menu, ready to order?, can I get you the bill? That sort of thing. It used to feel like I was a guest in their house — now I felt like a nuisance. The plastic rice soon and chopsticks looked like they’d seen better days too.
As for the food — there was plenty of it. In fairness the dumplings were delicious and the bang bang chicken salad lived up to expectation, but the hot and numbing duck — which used to be my favourite dish — ANYWHERE — was a bland duck dish sans any real flavour. When I mentioned it to the waitress, she offered up a «it could be that the batch of peppercorns just didn’t have enough flavour» … OK. Does the chef taste anything before it leaves the kitchen? If I order something called «hot and numbing» and it is neither of those things am I supposed to just shrug it off? The pork belly was plentiful — but the pork was dried out. The green beans in it were nice though. They picked up the saltiness of the pork belly and so I ate most of them.
Didn’t bother with a dessert.
I don’t think I will be going back.

I am not sure my expectations were too high but I was really disappointed in Spice Temple. We went on Saturday night. We ordered the spicy chicken wings with heaven facing chilli and the yellow noodles with braised beef, along with the Kung Pao Chicken, the sweet and sour pork and stir fried Asian greens with garlic. After the the wings and the noodles were nice enough but all dishes were incredibly salty-​too the point we could not finish the pork or the Asian greens.
The Kung Pao chicken looked impressive but for the price, all you got were a big bowl of dried chillis with a probably less than one chicken thigh buried in there.
Unfortunately, I won’t be rushing back

This place rocks. Food is fantastic. If you want to impress your better half or clients this is a great restaurant.
It has great service and ambience.

Spice temple has that cool feel about it when you enter. Very dim lighting and wooden slats across the window with a good table set up.
They have a good range on the menu. With some dishes you won’t recognize. But be brave and try something new.
They make some great cocktails :) so try a few out
Book before you go on busy weekends as it can be hard to get Into sometimes.
It is a little pricey so I save it for special occasions.
The food here was great. Every dish we ordered was delicious
I can’t remember the name of my dishes as I last ate here a year ago. But I will report back after my next visit

The food was excellent, some dishes more so than others but I thruoghly enjoyed eating each meal. The ambience however was a tad noisy for my liking and the service while not slow, could have been a bit more prompt, we had to wait quite a while to order or per diner drinks for example.

I had heard. read mixed reviews of this place… I think a lot of these stem from the fact that it is Asian food and we are blessed with an outstanding and neatly priced China town in Melbourne. Let me say that I thought the spices and mixes of dishes here were far superior to any I have tasted… order the chicken wings (yes, simple, boring, deep fried morsels of godly deliciousness…), order the calamari with five spice, order the brisket, order the duck pancakes, order it all! Loved it and will be going back…

I had heard good things about this place–
I took a business associate out to dinner as a thank you for a job well done.
This person was allergic to cilantro so we studied the menu and ordered a beef dish
and told the Waitress about the allergy–
We were told that the dish was only garnished with cilantro and asked if it could be made without .
She assured us that it could /​would be made without and she would inform the kitchen of the allergy issue to and there would be NO Cilantro on the order–
When the food arrived it was piled with enough cilantro for a trip to the Hospital.
Needless to say it was sent away–
They brought a new order to the table without and it was very good and they were very nice about it.
I ordered kung pao chicken but had to find the chicken buried in red peppers.
In the end it was a very OK dinner and VERY expensive.
I would have to be convinced to return.

I always like walking through the Queensbridge entrance of Crown Casino. It is like living vicariously through the latest advertisement for the place there as the doorman tips his hat after you walk past a virtual showroom of motorcars after seeing Eddie McGuire (or any of the current popular AFL footy players) being whisked away in the lastest model Holden. If you aren’t distracted by these themes, you will walk past Neil Perry’s latest addition to the Rockpool Empire, Rosetta, and once you exchange pleasantries with the doorman for the Crown, you will be beckoned toward the entrance of Spice Temple.
After visiting the Sydney Spice Temple multiple times and it being a personal favourite, it wasn’t until recently I got into Spice Temple Melbourne for lunch. The yum cha special remains a differentiating factor between the Melbourne and Sydney menus (the full menu is available for both lunch and dinner in Sydney whereas a special menu is available in Melbourne for lunch) and not only is it much heralded in the usual press, I really wanted to know whether it was better than the offerings that you would find at the Shark Fin Inn on Little Bourke Street. To make it simple, it was.
Unlike other yum cha offerings where you flag down a roving cart that is hell-​bent on slamming into some unsuspecting patron’s knee, you order directly off of a comprehensive yum cha menu from the attentive server. Whilst being refreshed by the Lord Nelson Three Sheets ($ 10) by the bottle, you have the opportunity to mull over the twenty items on the yum cha menu but that is just 25% of what is available. You do have limited access to the full menu, which I was very pleased to discover.
From the Har Gow steamed prawn dumplings ($ 11) to the boiled chicken and pork dumpings to the ominously red coloured king prawn wontons with aged black vinegar dressing ($ 11) on the menu denoting it is especially hot, everything was great. The staple BBQ pork buns ($ 12) didn’t taste very common and in fact had the unique Perry flair whereas the chichen and crab xiao long bao ($ 12) had good complementary flavours.
One of the yum cha menu items has sichuan pepper — the crispy prawn wontons with hot and numbing sauce ($ 11) made my tongue go numb so I could slur as the result of the food instead of the alcoholic beverage for a welcome change.
Spice fried chicken wings with heaven facing chillies ($ 15) and tingling prawns ($ 24) rounded out the numbing experience. Although you needed to work for your food with respect to the chicken wings, it certainly beat the chicken feet that you will find at various locations in Chinatown.
Water views and a contemporary fit-​out with sometimes quasi-​traditional music and at other times more lively but strangely selected hip-​hop provided the background score. After dining in the bowels of the Sydney location and becoming used to the darkness where the light guides you to the surface, it is really the polar opposite at the Melbourne location where you get to see the usual travellers of Southbank Promenade provide some tertiary amusement whilst you consume reasonably priced food full of flavour. Although I will still end up at Shark Fin Inn on occasion merely for the authenticity and sheer and utter commotion of the place, I reckon that Spice Temple yum cha provides a suitable alternative for lunch and of course with their full menu on reserve during the evening, it is indeed one of the jewels in the Crown.

Salty, Oily, Fatty food presented in a near dark atmosphere with average service. Way too expensive at about $ 125 per person. Try China Town or Box Hill if you want great food at nearly ¹⁄₁₀ the cost.

If you’re a chilli or spice lover — this is definitely the place for you (hence the name). Even if you’re not (like me), there are still some mild selections to cater for you. Food is very tasty and is very original — not your traditional chinese cuisine. The restaurant has a nice ambience: dim and seductive due to it’s black and dark interior décor.

I have only good things to say about the Spice Temple. I have dined here twice and absolutely salivated over every mouthful each time.
You can order a cocktail based on your birth year of the chinese zodiac. Mine was a gorgeous and subtle lychee number.
My top recommendations, in no particular order;
*crispy pork belly
*hot and numbing prawn salad
*beef and black bean (mandatory!!)
*hot and numbing duck
*chilli snake beans
Make sure you check out the super dark but super suave bar downstairs too!

One thing you could never say about the food at Spice Temple is that it is flavourless or bland — Spice Temple is DEFINITELY the right name for this asian restaurant. The other thing is, dont come looking for your standard chinese fare– the menu specifically avoids Cantonese cuisine, which is what you and I would know as regular ol’ Chinese food.
I love me some chilli. If you do too, do yourself a favour and try some of their spicier dishes –if you can handle the heat, you’re in for a treat (yes I’m aware that was a lame rhyme).
The décor is a modern and kind of sexy twist on Chinese design, whilst at the same time keeping the clean lines and level of sophistication that Neil Perry’s restaurants are renowned for.
The wine list has exactly 100 selections on offer– apparently, though I cant confirm this because I had better things to do with my time than count the wine list. The wine selection featured plenty of local wines, and Im sure offer something for everyone.