- 445 Little Collins St Melbourne | Wed to Sat 6 - 11pm
- info@roninomakase.com | 0401 721 491
Counter seating at an omakase means every guest sits facing the chef while the food is cooked and plated in front of them. At Rōnin Ōmakase that counter has ten seats, and it is the whole dining room at 445 Little Collins St in the Melbourne CBD.
The number shapes the rest of the evening. There is no printed menu and nothing to order, and about ten courses arrive over roughly two hours. Most restaurants keep one chef’s table for a lucky booking. Here all ten seats are that table, which is the idea behind our page on the chef’s table in Melbourne.
Rōnin runs on a single chef, a fact the FAQ states in plain words. Chef Liam Lee finishes each course at the counter and hands it straight to the guest in front of him. There is no pass and no wall between the kitchen and the ten seats, so nothing sits waiting between the cook and the guest.
The same fact has a cost, and it is better to know it early. Because there is only one chef, dietary alterations cannot be accommodated. That line sits on the FAQ page and applies to every seat at the counter.
Chef Liam Lee has been the one behind the counter since 2026, the year Rōnin turned to Korean cooking after opening in 2023. He spent more than a decade leading Australian kitchens before that, Nomad, Firebird and Studio Amaro among them, having trained in Seoul at Gyungbokgung Hanjungsik. His full background is on the chef page.
A seat at the counter puts the cooking an arm’s length away. Charcoal does much of the work, and the ferments and banchan that go with each course are all made in house. With only ten seats along one counter, nobody is watching from the back of a room.
Because the roughly ten courses follow the season and the chef, nothing is published before a sitting. The reasoning is set out in why there is no printed menu, and the gallery shows the counter and the plates as guests see them.
If this is your first omakase, the two hours pass more easily when you know the order of things. What to expect at your first omakase walks through the evening from arrival at 445 Little Collins St to the last course.
With ten seats at the counter, reservations are essential and bookings are online only. Seats for each month are released at 8pm on the 20th of the month before. The omakase is A$195 per guest at the soft launch price, paid in full when you book, and how reservations work at Rōnin covers the calendar in detail.
The counter is open Wednesday to Saturday from 6pm to 11pm. For a private event or a group enquiry, write to info@roninomakase.com instead of booking seat by seat. For everything else, book a seat at the counter once your month has been released.
