Sederhana Melbourne (Queen Street)

Restaurant · Melbourne, VIC, Australia

About Sederhana Melbourne (Queen Street)

Fifty-four years before it reached Australia, Restoran Sederhana was already Indonesia's most visited restaurant chain, a nasi padang institution from Jakarta whose name means simple in Bahasa Indonesia, a nod to the no-frills Minangkabau cooking style it serves. A 2018 Roy Morgan survey found it drew millions more patrons nationwide than either KFC or McDonald's, and by the mid-1990s the chain had begun expanding beyond Indonesia into roughly 200 shops across Indonesia, Malaysia, and more recently Singapore. In June 2026 it opened its first Australian location at 207 Queen Street in the Melbourne CBD, following a Munich offshoot called Diva Minang earlier the same year.

The Melbourne outlet was brought to Australia through a partnership between the Sederhana family and Hana Tania, the Indonesian-born restaurateur who built Ria Ayam Penyet into an eleven-store Australian network after launching it as a student in 2013. Tania trained for a week in Jakarta under Sederhana's head chef of thirty-five years before returning with her Melbourne team for a second round of instruction. Because Australian food safety rules do not permit the traditional Minang table service, where a stack of small cloth-wrapped plates arrives and diners pay only for what they open, the Queen Street location instead uses a cafeteria-style counter where guests point to their selections before paying.

At least 25 dishes are available at any time, anchored by six curry bases including the signature beef rendang, built from a twenty-spice paste reduced slowly over nine hours, and a tangy asam pedas catfish curry. Fried and grilled Padang staples such as ayam pop, chicken poached and then fried in coconut oil, round out the menu alongside sambal stir-fries. The restaurant's spice mixes are ground at Sederhana's central kitchen in Jakarta and shipped to Melbourne rather than remixed locally. The space is fitted with banquettes in handwoven songket fabric, matching Sederhana's stores elsewhere. The restaurant is open daily from 11am to 3pm and again from 4:30pm to 9pm, and can be reached at (03) 7054 5175 or through sederhana.com.au.

Address

Opening hours

Daily

11:00 AM - 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM - 9:00 PM

Contact

• Phone: 03 7054 5175
• Website: https://sederhana.com.au

Category

Indonesian Restaurant in Australia

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