Aunty Franklee Hawthorn

Aunty Franklee is an awesome restaurant. It has the best Malaysian food we’ve had by some distance. There are some seriously interesting offerings here - beautifully composed, cooked and presented dishes. They don't just rely on the usual classic dishes. There’s lots of innovation and great flavours abound. And, it’s all in a lovely warm atmosphere. The restaurant had a bright modern aspect and is tastefully decorated. It’s anything but overdone. There’s a lovely eclectic collection of cane and glass. We also admired some of the soft wall colours here as they really work. Our first surprise was that they serve all natural wines here. We were advised to have the 2017 Staring at the Sun, a blend of fiano, vermentino and moscato giallo. This is an organic wine from Gippsland. It’s a nice drop which goes beautifully with the food at Aunty Franklee. The wines here have all been specially chosen with assistance from a sommelier with expertise in organic wines. The wine has hints of lychee and is beguilingly cloudy and opaque. I’ll be honest, I’ve always been suspicious of natural wines. I would never have chosen this wine myself but we both really enjoyed it. I would order it again in a heartbeat, especially as it so complements the food. At 10% alcohol it’s a wine you can have without regret. We started with the sardine dip which is beautiful. It has a startlingly fresh sardine flavour. It does what is intended and seriously enlivens the palate. We really liked it. We had the silver whiting with turmeric relish next. The crisp whiting is excellent. It is cooked so wonderfully and works brilliantly with the green peppercorn vinaigrette. There’s also a lovely sharp taste from the relish. Again, we really thought this was a very very good starter. The next dish was the sambal blue pea flower rice. This is a lovely looking dish highlighted of course by the blue coconut rice. It also has chopped tomato, fried peanuts, sliced cucumber, a hard boiled egg, fried anchovies and sambal. It’s fantastic. Everything works, the look, the taste and the textures. It’s a sensational dish. We then had a sample of the grilled “bakars” short beef ribs. These were beautiful and delicate. The sticky rib meat is so soft and falls effortlessly off the bone. It’s fantastic with the sambal or the peanut sauce. It’s another highlight dish which the world’s most beautiful woman declared her dish of the day. The char kuey teow is another superb looking looking dish which again has very well balanced heat. There’s so much to like in this dish. The noodles are soft and beautiful. It has gorgeous pork crackling. Love the Chinese sausage as well. It’s a great dish. Next up was wok fired chicken noodle soup comprising wok fired vermicelli noodles in a slow cooked mother hen soup with five kinds of mushrooms, with dried squid. Gosh, this had such beautiful flavour. The mushrooms too are cooked to perfection. It is a beautifully substantive soup, and perfect with a dash of chilli sauce on the soup spoon. The chicken pieces were fantastic too! This soup is a serious taste sensation. It was my favourite dish, a hard thing to nominate among such a great range of dishes. The only disappointment was that we were too full to have the dry bak kut teh, a house specialty. There’s an upside to this though. The dish is bound to feature prominently when we next visit Aunty Franklee soon. We finished with the Sarawak layer cake and various samples of durian, prune and mocha and jackfruit. This is lovely cake. It’s delicate, light and fluffy. It’s a great way to finish. We adored our experience at Aunty Franklee and frankly we’ll definitely be back. This is a wonderful restaurant. You can even have BYO wine here to reduce cost. Our sincere thanks to the wonderful Fion for her very kind invitation to dine here. What a lovely person who is so passionate about the cuisine and other aspects of the restaurant. A truly enriching experience!

We’ve frequent the Russell St branch when we craved a Malaysian classic Bah Kut Teh (BKT), to top things they had the dry version of BKT. They do it very well! The Hawthorn brunch has just recently opened. The setting is cosy and beautiful with great looking classic furniture. They have toys and books to keep kids entertained and the entrance is wheelchair friendly. The food is splendid and is of the same quality as the main branch. There is additional new dishes which are welcome additions to their already good menu. We had the dry BKT and stirfried pipis served with multigrain rice. We also had the opportunity to try the classic BKT soup and their lamb skewers. Everything was fantastic. Happy to come back again and to recommend the place to friends. It’s the sort of place you’d be happy to bring guests to be entertained. There is also a loyalty app that you can use to get further discounts during first and future visits - currently this is not available for use at the Hawthorn store.

We contacted the restaurant directly to order this majestic dish. The lobsters cost $110/kg and we got one that weighed between 1.3-1.6kg. A bowl with 4 noodles can be comfortably shared by 4 people. There were 6 of us, so we ordered two additional noodle dishes and portions were just nice. Aunty franklee’s version cooked lobsters with crispy noodles - personally I prefer less crispy yee mee type of noodles purely because those noodles soak up more of the sauce, but this version still went well with the ginger + spring onion sauce. Lobster itself was very fresh and meaty. It took us a good hour to demolish the dish. I even injured my finger in the process thanks to the sharp pincers, but that was solely my fault. As for the other dishes, I thought the tomato maggi goreng stayed true to its east Malaysian roots. Generous portions of fish cakes and eggs too. I’m generally less of a char kuey teow fan, so it’s no surprise that I favoured the other two dishes. This good experience and the smell of dry bak kut teh wafting through the cafe guarantees that I’ll be back for another meal! Taste: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ambience: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Presentation: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Price: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Service: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Insta: melbfoodie_mark YT: MelbFoodieMark - Grabbed Char Kuey Teow ($14.5) & Bak Kut Teh ($10). Decided to pop by after hearing about this place so many times. I absolutely enjoyed Char Kuey Teow - slightly oily but VERY flavorful, tons of meats, and great texture. I can't get enough of it! Slightly expensive considering the portion but still tasted amazing :) Bak Kut Teh was quite average considering all the good reviews I've been getting. It was bland and lacked flavors. Overall, highly recommend this place!

Interesting menu, small yet great options. We had the chicken skewers, although the chicken was a little dry the seasoning made these very nice. You can't go wrong with satay sauce. Bak khu teh was the pick of the bunch, tender meats in a very tasty broth, I would go back for this on its own. The staff were very friendly, suggestive on what was good and the food came out in a timely manner. Worth trying for sure.