Ling Nan Chinese Restaurant

About Ling Nan Chinese Restaurant

Ling Nan is a decades-old Melbourne Cantonese institution that reopened on Lonsdale Street in late 2021 after its original Chinatown room on Little Bourke closed — part-owner Sherri Mong kept the same chef, roughly 80% of staff, and the same laminated-menu repertoire (Broadsheet). The ground-floor room opposite QV is deliberately no-frills: paper tablecloths, fluorescent lighting, brusque service, and tanks of live abalone, mud crab, prawns, and lobster that staff point to when asked for recommendations. It trades as a reliable late-night feed until 1:30am daily, popular with chefs after service for XO pippies with crunchy youtiao, shredded duck pancakes, prawn toast, and salt-and-pepper chicken ribs, plus lobster noodles and crab fried rice (The Infatuation, Jan 2025). BYO wine is welcome with corkage; small groups often queue with no guaranteed reservations. Uber Eats offers a partial delivery menu — the in-room experience centres on the full late-night a la carte board.