This page gathers what was written about JAMU, the former Richmond restaurant, across food and design media during the years it traded. We have sourced this from each publication's own coverage rather than from quotes passed along secondhand, and we note where we could not confirm a detail with confidence. Jamuan Melbourne is an independent guide, not JAMU restaurant, and this page is a record of past press coverage rather than current reviews.
Broadsheet
Broadsheet profiled JAMU as part of its Richmond restaurant coverage, describing the venue as a contemporary Asian-Australian restaurant on Palmer Street and naming former Hawthorn AFL players James Frawley and Isaac Smith, alongside Evelyn Lau of A Thousand Blessings, as the people behind it. Broadsheet's description of the space noted exposed concrete floors, copper fixtures and seating for around 70 guests, consistent with other coverage of the fit-out.
Time Out Melbourne
Time Out listed JAMU under its Melbourne restaurant guide, describing it as a modern Asian diner at 1 Palmer Street, Richmond. Its coverage of the breakfast menu mentioned sambal scrambled eggs and housemade crumpets, and the listing included service hours spanning breakfast through to dinner across most days of the week, positioning JAMU as a restaurant that operated across multiple meal periods rather than dinner only.
Concrete Playground
Concrete Playground covered JAMU within its Melbourne restaurant and events guide, including a specific feature on its bottomless brunch offering, referred to in at least one listing as a "bottomless bao brunch," alongside mentions of happy-hour specials. Concrete Playground's venue listing described the fusion of Malaysian and modern Australian cooking and called out the cheeseburger spring rolls as a dish worth ordering. That listing was later updated to mark JAMU as closed, with the page itself last updated around October 2023, though this reflects when the page was revised rather than necessarily the exact date the restaurant closed.
Lifestyle and travel coverage
JAMU also picked up coverage from lifestyle outlets including Lux Nomade and We Heart, both of which wrote up the restaurant's menu and setting, pointing to dishes such as Cone Bay barramundi, wagyu preparations and a honey-cumin half chicken as highlights. The World Loves Melbourne included JAMU in a roundup of Malaysian restaurants across the city, situating it alongside other Malaysian kitchens trading in Melbourne at the time.
Design coverage
The fit-out, designed by One Design Office (ODO), was documented on the studio's own project page and picked up by design-focused outlets covering Melbourne hospitality interiors. Coverage of the design focused on the circular motif running through the room, the copper and mesh screens referencing traditional Chinese architectural partitions, and the deliberately dark, moody lighting the owners and designers had in mind for the space. We have seen this project referenced in general design and architecture coverage of Melbourne hospitality fit-outs from that period, though we have not been able to verify a feature in every specific design title sometimes mentioned alongside projects like this, and we would rather leave that unconfirmed than attribute it without a source we can point to directly.
Reading the coverage together
Taken as a whole, the press record on JAMU is consistent on the basics: a Malaysian-leaning, modern Australian menu, a distinctive copper-and-mesh interior, a loyal bottomless brunch following, and a kitchen willing to put unconventional dishes like cheeseburger spring rolls next to more traditional plates. For the fuller narrative behind these individual pieces of coverage, including what we know and do not know about the restaurant's closure, see our JAMU restaurant history page. If you want a visual sense of the kind of dishes this style of restaurant serves, our Southeast Asian food photo gallery uses illustrative stock photography rather than archival JAMU images, since we were not able to source the restaurant's own photography for this site. For ongoing coverage of Southeast Asian dining in Melbourne more broadly, our food guides and dining updates section is the place to keep reading.