Profile
Discover Shu Restaurant, Melbourne’s innovative vegan Sichuan destination that’s bringing authentic Chinese flavors to plant-based dining. This moody industrial space offers an adventurous dining experience through traditional Sichuan techniques applied to entirely vegan ingredients.
Why Shu Restaurant Transforms Melbourne’s Vegan Scene
Located in Collingwood, Shu Restaurant creates an immersive experience that honors Sichuan culinary traditions while pioneering plant-based applications. Their signature 10-course degustation demonstrates how traditional Chinese techniques can create sophisticated plant-based fine dining experiences.
The Sichuan Adventure Experience
Step into a moody industrial space designed to complement the bold, adventurous flavors of modern Sichuan cuisine. The atmosphere sets the stage for discovering how traditional Chinese spices and cooking methods can transform plant-based ingredients into memorable culinary experiences.
Signature Vegan Degustation
The 10-course degustation takes diners on a journey through innovative Sichuan-inspired dishes, including creative presentations like daikon pot plants with black tahini soil and grilled exotic mushrooms in crispy pie. The experience culminates with sophisticated desserts like matcha cashew cream chocolate cannoli.
Key Highlights
- Cuisine: Modern vegan Sichuan with traditional techniques
- Experience: 10-course vegan degustation menu
- Atmosphere: Moody industrial space for adventurous dining
- Innovation: Traditional Chinese methods applied to plant-based ingredients
- Special Events: Weekend unlimited yum cha, wine collaborations
The decor is very cool and quirky, good ambience, and the service was quick and friendly.
I was getting pretty full after the first round of all the dishes, but I loved getting to try a bit of everything.
I was a little hesitant to go here as I wasn’t sure I would like the dishes from reading the menu (and from reading a couple of previous reviews) but I was very very wrong, and can’t wait to go back.
My highly unexpected favourite dish was the silken tofu, avo, black sesame cracker: AMAZING, perfect balance of flavours (sweet, salty, chilli), this dish really blew my mind.
Other favourites:
– Grilled spinach riceballs: SO GOOD! smelt heavenly, great flavour and meatball texture
– Golden mantau bread, shiitake paste: amazing paste (very tasty), and great toasted fluffy soft bread
– Spicy potato mash, grilled corn: delicious! like potato curry
– roasted yuxiang eggplant: very good! sweet and sour type sauce, great crispy texture
– mince san choi bao: my partner LOVED it
Looking forward to going back soon.
The food looked great and some meals were tasty but overall it was sub par food that all tasted quite similar and the dessert was inedible. Most courses are cold or luke warm and our noodles came out stuck together as they had obviously sat for ages before being served.
Restaurant was freezing and service was lacking.
It took over 3 hours for our experience so prepare to wait for each morsel of food.
Not worth the price.
For us, food lovers, it’s so important each dishes that we devoured consist of these things:
Taste and quality.
To be honest, this is the first vegetarian food that we’ve tried, and we’re actually soo soo amazed by the presentation, let alone the taste!
Our favourites are:
Roasted eggplant
Grilled mushroom skewers
Hand-made noodles
And the cashew mousse (which presented so beautifully)
We’re down to come back here for more! 😋
