Ruyi ModernChinese

Down a Liverpool Street laneway in Melbourne's theatre district, this dining room has become a byword for prettiness as much as for cooking. Since 2013 the kitchen has reworked regional Chinese dishes into delicate, contemporary plates built on premium Australian produce and made for sharing. The interior, by a well-regarded Melbourne design studio, tones the traditional Chinese palette down to muted reds and a soft namesake green, filling a bright, sunlit space with natural materials, greenery and a calm restraint rarely associated with Chinese dining. Every plate, bowl, glass and water pitcher is thrown by hand by a Melbourne ceramicist exclusively for the room, their small imperfections lending the table a quiet, tactile naturalness. The result is a considered kind of fine dining, flavoursome and fresh rather than fiery, precise rather than fussy, served across dinner from Tuesday to Saturday and available for private events any day of the week. It flatters an occasion without tipping into formality, welcoming a quiet dinner for two or a larger celebration with equal ease. What lingers is the coherence of it all, cooking, ceramics and interior pulling in one direction, so that a meal feels less like a restaurant visit than a step into a composed world of its own.