MoMo & Coco

Melbourne’s Best South East Asian Desserts Tour

Introduction

If there is one regional cuisine that Melbourne does way better than NYC, it would be South East Asian food. Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino etc, all are much much better in Melbourne than NYC. Same goes for South East Asian desserts. In this guide, we take a tour of five of the best South East Asian dessert spots in the Melbourne CBD area. 

Thai desserts

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Pun Pun, 14 Watertank Way, Melbourne CBD. 
  • ☑ Budget: $.
  • ☑ Must-eat: Bau Loy.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: Tucked away in a quiet laneway pocket, Pun Pun is a cash-only spot offering an extended menu of traditional Thai desserts. Sticky rice with mango of course makes a showing, as does an assortment of tapioca cakes shaped into flowers,  and cups of shaved ice laced with Thai milk tea or pink lychee syrup. The most photogenic dessert on the menu has to be the Bau Loy, where little flower rice jellies and colourful tapioca balls float in a bowl of sweet yet slightly salty coconut milk. Special mention to Pun Pun for keeping most desserts to below AUD $10, certainly quite a feat in Melbourne’s hyper-inflated-priced dessert scene…

Indonesian desserts

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Yoi, 155 Franklin Street, Melbourne CBD / North Melbourne.
  • ☑ Budget: $$.
  • ☑ Must-eat:  Murtabak.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Aside from kuih, one of the Malaysian desserts that we absolutely adore has to be apom balik, a thick pancake served piping warm and usually stuffed with banana or sugared peanuts. Across the sea in Indonesia, a similar version comes stuffed with a wider variety of fillings. Nestled between the CBD and Queen Victoria Market, Yoi is an excellent Indonesian lunch spot serving scrumptious savoury dishes. As an epilogue, don’t miss Yoi’s martabak. You can choose from an “original” or pandan base, and thick blankets of nutella, kaya, matcha, or milo, or showers of shredded cheese, corn, sprinkles or peanuts. We chose kaya and corn, and well…this is definitely not a solo dessert experience. Bring at least one friend…ideally more…it’s a huge serving. 

Malaysian desserts

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Pandan Dessert Bar, 27 Hardware Lane, Melbourne CBD.
  • ☑ Budget: $-$$. 
  • ☑ Must-eat:  Ais kacang.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Long time readers of this dessert blog know that we are obsessed with shaved ice — from Japanese kakigori to Korean bingsu, from those found in NYC to Hawaii. It’s probably because it reminds us of many summer holidays spent in Malaysia as kids, where countless bowls of ais kacang were the only effective antidote to the sticky humid weather. A pretty good rendition of ais kacang may be found at Pandan Dessert Bar, bejewelled with corn, red beans and grass jelly, and swirled with a sweet rose syrup. You could miss the cendol though….the pandan noodles were unfortunately, rather frozen-like. 😦  Both are available in a solo size, and a larger shareable size. 

Vietnamese desserts

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Che, 259 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne CBD. 
  • ☑ Budget: $-$$. 
  • ☑ Must-eat:  Che.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story:  Last year, our trip to Vietnam was cut short by a bout of the most severe food poisoning we have ever experienced. As a consequence, we weren’t able to sample as much Vietnamese desserts as we had originally planned. 😦  If you can’t make it out to Springvale for a Vietnamese dessert hit, you can zap any FOMO by checking out Che. There are about 6-7 different types of che available. Bring a friend or two along, and for AUD $12, you can get three bowls of very milky che desserts stirred through with vibrantly-hued water chestnuts, pandan jelly, mung beans, coconut jelly, and red bean. 

Filipino desserts

  • ☑ Dessert destination: Kariton Sorbetes, various locations including Melbourne CBD. 
  • ☑ Budget: $.
  • ☑ Must-eat:  Ice cream.
  • ☑ Short and sweet story: We previously featured Kariton in our guide to Melbourne’s best Asian ice cream shops. It truly stands out as an ice crea shop laser focused on Filipino dessert flavours.  You won’t find an errant strawberry or tiramisu ice cream flavour here. Kariton’s Ube is extravagantly creamy, but as we find ube a bit too heavy to endure for more than a spoonful, we preferred Kariton’s range of sorbet more. The Buko Pandan sorbet is excellent, embedded with shredded coconut and pandan jelly, and as a double scoop experience, it is perfectly balanced with either the Guyabano (a refreshing soursop sorbet) or the Four Seasons (a sweet mix of guava, pineapple, mango and orange). By comparison, Kariton’s non-sorbet range are much creamier and much much sweeter, featuring flavours such as caramelized bana, milo milk, cheese, and dulce de leche that draw on distinctively Filipino desserts. Note that Kariton scoops particularly generously – aka slightly larger-than-average-sized scoop.

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