Richmond, Melbourne: where Little Saigon meets the MCG

A Saturday in Richmond can start with a $6.50 banh mi on Victoria Street, the kind you eat leaning against a shopfront because the queue has already taught you humility. By lunch you can be in a converted warehouse with a natural wine in hand, and by evening you’re swept down Swan Street with scarf-wearing footy fans heading for the MCG. That’s the trick here: Richmond does not choose a personality. It keeps four shopping strips, a sporting precinct, and a whole lot of migrant kitchens in the same slightly rumpled jacket.

What Richmond is known for

Richmond wears its history on its terrace-house facades and never really bothers to hide the seams. For a century it was hard-scrabble and industrial, a working suburb of tanneries, boot factories and the sort of labour that leaves a place with a practical face. Then the Vietnamese arrivals of the late 1970s changed Victoria Street for good, and Little Saigon took hold: fluorescent, noisy, deeply useful. Later came the renovators, the loft apartments, the breweries, the wine bars, the places that made old sheds feel like a concept. The result is not one Richmond but several, stitched together by tram lines and appetite.

Victoria Street is the loud one, the strip that made food writers send people here in the first place. It is all pho steam, grocers stacked to the ceiling, and the steady choreography of people who know exactly what they came for. Swan Street is the match-day artery, where the crowd surges before an AFL game and where the newer wine bars and Greek share-plate rooms have landed. Bridge Road, once the outlet-shopping mile, has shifted toward restaurants and gin. Church Street keeps a quieter grip on coffee roasters and independent retail. The suburb’s charm is not that it is polished; it is that nobody seems to be pretending.

And then there is the sporting precinct, which gives Richmond a second pulse. The MCG, AAMI Park and the Australian Open arenas sit close enough that the suburb can feel like a foyer for the city’s biggest rituals. On game days the mood changes by the minute. By morning, it’s prams and coffee cups. By afternoon, it’s pre-match pints and people in team colours. By night, it’s gig-goers and late tables and the faint sense that everyone has decided to stay out one stop longer than planned.

Where to eat & drink

Start on Victoria Street and do not overthink it. Richmond rewards the straightforward eater, the person who wants lunch that arrives fast and tastes like somebody meant it. Nhu Lan Bakery at 152 Victoria St is the strip’s most famous banh mi stop, and the reason is obvious the second you bite through the roll: pork, pâté, pickled carrot, crisp bread, around $6.50, and a queue that regularly spills onto the footpath. It is not precious. It is not trying to be. It is exactly the sort of sandwich that makes you rearrange your day.

A few doors and a few decisions later, I Love Pho at 264 Victoria St pulls in the faithful with a clean, layered beef broth that tastes like it has been watched carefully. Pho Hung Vuong is the old-guard bowl further along, one of those places that earns its reputation by staying put while the suburb changes around it. And when you want a break from the Vietnamese run without leaving the strip, Pacific Seafood BBQ House at 240 Victoria St brings bustling Cantonese barbecue and Peking duck to the table, proof that Richmond’s appetite is broader than the shorthand.

Then there are the restaurants that remind you Richmond can also trade in polish without losing its nerve. Minamishima off Bridge Road is widely rated Melbourne’s finest sushi, an intimate omakase bar where chef Koichi Minamishima works local seafood and fish flown from Tokyo’s Toyosu market. It is the sort of room that makes you lower your voice without being told. Anchovy on Bridge Road does modern, regional Vietnamese with its own single-origin fish sauce, which is exactly the kind of detail that sounds fussy until the plate lands and you realise somebody has actually thought about flavour. Vlado’s has been grilling prime steak on Bridge Road since 1964, family-run and stubborn in the best way, a reminder that longevity can still be a form of flavour.

Swan Street brings a different kind of table. Feast of Merit at 117 Swan St serves Middle Eastern share plates on a retractable-roof rooftop and funnels profits to the YGAP anti-poverty charity, which is a rare example of a good cause and a good lunch not cancelling each other out. Bahari on Swan Street plates modern Greek, including saganaki, in a way that suits the suburb’s habit of mixing comfort with a little swagger. Richmond, at its best, is a place where lunch can be $6.50 or it can be omakase, and neither feels out of character.

For drinking, the suburb has learned to spread its bets. Mountain Goat Brewery at 80 North St has been brewing here since 1999, a useful anchor if you want beer at the source. On the newer side of the ledger, Clover leans French, Lilac Wine trades from a grungy warehouse with vinyl on the turntable and French bistro dishes, and Bowerbird on Bridge Road pours from 70-plus Victorian gins. Richmond’s nightlife does not need to shout to be busy; it just needs a room, a counter, and a reason to stay.

Going out

Richmond after dark is built on two rails: the old pub-as-live-room tradition, and the newer wine-bar habit of making everyone sit closer together. The anchor, naturally, is the Corner Hotel at 57 Swan St, a remodelled 19th-century pub that has been a live-music venue since the 1940s and remains one of the country’s most storied rooms. The White Stripes reportedly worked up the Seven Nation Army riff during a 2003 soundcheck here, and U2 later filmed in its band room and rooftop. Downstairs is the sticky-floored gig space; up top is a beer garden with city views. It is a proper Melbourne room, which is to say it has seen things and does not brag about them.

If you want your night with a bit more terrace and a bit less volume, Swan Street has options that understand the assignment. Harlow wraps a rooftop around the pub formula with DJs and city views. Fargo & Co, in a former bank, spreads itself across two levels with a big rooftop terrace and bottomless brunches. Union House does the polished pub thing with a rooftop deck and craft-beer list, which is a polite way of saying it knows how to host a long session.

The wine-bar set has settled in too. Clover is the French-leaning one, all refined small plates and the sort of lighting that flatters both food and conversation. Lilac Wine is grungier, warehouse-born, with vinyl on the turntable and French bistro dishes that suit the room’s slightly rebellious mood. Bowerbird is the gin specialist, and the fact that it pours from 70-plus Victorian gins tells you exactly how seriously Richmond can take a drink without making a speech about it.

Things to do

The single biggest draw is still a game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Even if you have never watched Australian rules, an AFL match at the ’G is Melbourne’s defining ritual, and general-admission tickets are often cheap. Walk across Yarra Park with the crowd from Richmond or Jolimont stations and the suburb changes in your peripheral vision: snacks in hand, scarves around necks, everyone moving in the same direction with the confidence of people who know where the gates are. On non-match days, the ground runs stadium tours and houses the National Sports Museum. It is worth seeing the place when it is quiet, if only to understand how much noise it is built to hold.

Next door, AAMI Park hosts A-League football and rugby, and the Australian Open arenas are a short walk further along, which means Richmond gets to live beside several of Melbourne’s biggest sporting moods at once. That proximity matters. It gives the suburb a constant hum, even on ordinary days, as if the city’s big rituals are always being rehearsed just out of frame.

Outside sport, Richmond is best explored on foot as an eating-and-browsing crawl. Graze Victoria Street, then work Bridge Road’s shops and Church Street’s roasters. On Saturday mornings, Gleadell Street Market off Bridge Road — trading since 1873 — sets up fruit, veg and bric-a-brac stalls with the kind of scrappy, old-Melbourne feel that makes you slow down whether you intended to or not. The Main Yarra Trail runs along the river on Richmond’s western edge for a walk or bike ride toward the city or out toward the eastern suburbs, which is handy if you need to burn off the second banh mi or just want a break from asphalt and chatter.

And if you happen to be here in late January, the Victoria Street Lunar (Tet) Festival fills Little Saigon with lion dances, food stalls and crowds. It is the strip at full volume, the neighbourhood speaking in all the languages it stores in its kitchens.

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Shopping & markets

Bridge Road built Richmond’s shopping reputation as Melbourne’s factory-outlet mile, a roughly one-kilometre run of discount fashion and homewares between Punt Road and Church Street. It is quieter than it was in its outlet heyday, and frankly that is not a tragedy. Much of the strip has shifted toward restaurants and bars, which means the shopping is less frantic and more selective. Bargain-hunters still do best on weekdays before the crowds, when you can actually look at a rack without being elbowed by a bloke in a polo shirt who has decided today is the day for a bargain.

Among the retailers is SisterWorks at 296 Bridge Rd, a non-profit shop selling homewares and crafts made by migrant and refugee women. It is the kind of place that gives a shopping strip a conscience without making a song and dance about it. Swan Street handles the independent end of the retail spectrum, and Avenue Bookstore at 91 Swan St is the local anchor: a well-loved bookshop that does what good bookshops do, which is make you feel like you have wandered into a conversation already in progress.

On Victoria Street, the draw is the Asian grocers — vast, cheap and stocked with everything from lemongrass to live seafood, ideal if you are self-catering or just enjoy the pleasure of choosing your own dinner from a wall of noodles and sauces. The suburb’s retail life makes more sense once you accept that Richmond is not trying to be one thing. It is a place where you can buy a book, a gin, a fish sauce, and a football scarf without changing neighbourhoods.

Where to stay in Richmond

Richmond is a smart, well-priced base if you value being near the sport and the food over sitting inside the CBD. Swan Street, opposite Richmond Station, is the most convenient pocket. It puts you a short walk from the MCG and AAMI Park and a 10-minute tram from the city, with restaurants and pubs on the doorstep. That convenience has a price in noise, though, especially on match and gig nights, so light sleepers should know what they are signing up for.

For a quieter feel, the streets around Bridge Road and the leafier residential pockets toward Church Street trade some buzz for calm while staying walkable to everything. Budget-wise, Richmond generally sits below the CBD and glossy South Yarra, which makes it good value for its central location. The area works particularly well if you want to arrive, drop your bag, and immediately choose between pho, a pub, or a pre-match pint.

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Getting around

Richmond is one of Melbourne’s best-connected suburbs, roughly 3 km east of the CBD. Richmond Station is a major interchange where numerous suburban train lines converge, so almost any city train stops here; East Richmond and West Richmond stations serve the suburb’s edges, and North Richmond sits at the top of Victoria Street. Trains reach Flinders Street in around five minutes, which is about as close as Melbourne gets to frictionless.

Trams cover the strips: route 70 runs the length of Swan Street from Flinders Street, route 78 runs north–south along Church Street, and route 109 runs along Bridge Road into the city and out to Box Hill. The whole suburb is flat and eminently walkable, and you can cross Yarra Park on foot to the MCG. If you are heading to the airport, allow around 30–40 minutes by car or taxi/rideshare to Melbourne Airport (Tullamarine); there is no train, but SkyBus services run from the CBD a short tram ride away.

Richmond is the sort of suburb that makes sense as soon as you stop asking it to behave like a postcard. It is practical, loud where it needs to be, and very good at feeding you. That is usually enough.