Customers come from all over Melbourne to this Mauritian diner inside Dandenong Market, which is serving up traditional dishes such as chicken briani, fried noodles, venison-stuffed flatbread and chayote dumplings. It's also selling hard-to-find Mauritian pantry staples in-store and online.

As many as 3600 diamond-shaped pastizzi (crispy, flaky Maltese filled pastries) are made daily, using a recipe that goes back five generations. Flavours range from the true-to-tradition ricotta or curried pea, to the less conventional.

In a small lodge at a Hungarian community centre in Melbourne’s east, this husband-and-wife-run eatery serves all-you-can-eat buffet feasts of beef goulash, tiny dumplings, schnitzel and stews for $48. And it’s BYO wine.

The menu here is almost identical to the original restaurant in Sri Lanka, with fiery curries, tasty sambols spooned onto roti and hoppers, and more. Order dozens of dishes, ask the staff what goes with what, then share everything.

This Uyghur restaurant in Footscray is doing springy hand-pulled spicy noodles, beef dumplings, and flaky pastries filled with lamb and cumin.

For decades, members of Melbourne’s Polish community have flocked to this tiny city spot for traditional sausages, smoked pork loin and handmade pierogi.

Ha Nguyen is known for two Vietnamese specialties at her restaurant on Victoria Street. She learnt to make one of them at 15 years old; the other she learnt in an Indonesian refugee camp.

The spirit of this 50-year-old Elsternwick institution comes from a tiny town in Germany.

Head to Surrey Hills for specialities from Indonesia’s South Sumatra province.

Authentic Polish in the heart of Dandenong.