Gurney Drive (closed)

One evening on our way home from the CBD, Alastair, Bro and I stopped at Gurney Drive for a quick meal. The restaurant, presumably named after Gurney Drive in Penang, Malaysia, sells Penang Malaysian hawker food. It’s decked out with bright walls, framed pictures, and heavy wooden tables and chairs – oh, and lots of photos of the food stuck on the front window!

We ordered:

The Penang nasi pattaya ($9.20), a Penang type fried rice placed inside an omelette. It was just fried rice, but I really enjoyed it.

The Gurney chicken ribs ($18.80) were an extremely good eat. Now, you may wonder like we did, how you get chicken ribs. I have no idea! I would expect that chicken ribs would be quite small without a lot of meat, but these were quite meaty. They had been coated in a thick, sweetish sauce, and were pretty freaking moreish.

We also had a beef curry (about $10 I think?). I didn’t mind the curry, but the boys weren’t a fan of it. Like I said, I didn’t mind it, but I could see where they were coming from. The meat was in seriously huge chunks, so they didn’t think the meat had a chance to absorb the curry flavours. It tasted fairly mild, and was pretty oily as you can see (I don’t really care about that, but I’m sure others might). I would’ve liked quite a lot more spiciness.

I think Gurney Drive is worth a revisit – particularly for the chicken ribs. Other blogs say that the char kway teoh is also good so I must give that a go. I’m always on the hunt for a good char kway teoh!

Check out more opinions at these blogs:

  • Half Eaten
  • Eat and be merry, for tomorrow we die(t)
  • Less is more
  • Eat Drink and Be Merry
  • The Taste Buddies
  • Saint-ism


  • [googleMap name=”Gurney Drive” width=”600″ height=”300″ directions_to=”false”]284 Victoria St West Melbourne VIC Australia[/googleMap]


    Gurney Drive
    284 Victoria St
    West Melbourne
    Phone: 9329 6649

    Gurney Drive on Urbanspoon