(Photo illustration by Los Angeles Times)
Explore Melbourne’s ambitious dining scene with 25 coffee shops, restaurants and bars
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For Americans, the first moments in Melbourne, Australia can feel startlingly familiar, as though stumbling through a parallel universe. One soon realizes it is a place wholly unto itself. Colonized by the British in the 1830s and booming in wealth and population by the Victorian-era gold rush less than 20 years later, the port city retains a European grandeur in its architecture, sprawling parks and glinting beaches. Family-friendly pubs abound. So does an incredible, ambitiously modern dining culture fed by the city’s wellspring of immigrant communities.
Eating and drinking through Melbourne is all-consuming as a travel itinerary. Consider too, though, the possibility of a fine-dining destination not more than an hour or so away. A day trip, or overnight, can double as an excursion into the broader geographic beauty of Australia’s southernmost mainland state of Victoria.
In Melbourne, L.A. Times restaurant critic Bill Addison discovers a city that, like L.A., resists easy labels.
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Florian
Australian $
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
If you’ve just landed in Melbourne, detour slightly from the most direct route to the city’s center and head first to Florian in Carlton North, an inner suburb where beautifully maintained Victorian and Edwardian-style homes line leafy streets. Open early morning through mid-afternoon with occasional dinner pop-ups, Dom Gattermayr and Rose Richards’ 5-year-old haven is an ideal introduction to Melbourne’s relaxed-yet-urbane cafe culture. Seasonally changing toast options sidestep avocado cliches and involve combinations like lush tomato slices with green olives and tarragon in late summer, or saffron-braised beans paired with grilled radicchio in the winter. Yes, the coffee is very good.
617 Rathdowne St., Carlton North
617 Rathdowne St., Carlton North
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Queen Victoria Market
Australian $
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
In operation since 1878, “Queen Vic Market” (as Melburnians call it) remains one of the most popular tourist destinations in Australia for excellent reason. Inside its stately buildings, the halls pulse with crowds — chaotic, but also soothing in its rhythms and pervasive cheer. Start in the Dairy Produce Hall for, say, a bratwurst, or a few gorgeous local cheeses from Curds & Whey. Set aside a couple of hours to wander, and don’t miss the encyclopedic and perfectly named shop Books for Cooks.
Queen Street, Melbourne
Queen Street, Melbourne
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Caretaker’s Cottage
Australian Cocktails $$
(Ryan Noreiks)
If walls could speak, what would the formerly abandoned 112-year-old building in Melbourne’s Central Business District, once a home for nearby Wesley Church’s groundskeeper, say of its reincarnation as one of the hottest bars in the world? People now spill from its doors. Maybe you’ll land a table, or maybe you wind up standing. The genial staff reaches you either way. The cocktails, ever-changing, lean into global spirits and often incorporate fruits or vegetables. Its rightly famous martini, poured straight from the freezer and silky in texture, is holy water.
139-141 Little Lonsdale St., Melbourne
139-141 Little Lonsdale St., Melbourne
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Flower Drum
Australian Chinese $$$$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
One of the most celebrated restaurants in Australia, Flower Drum reached its golden anniversary last year by maintaining exacting standards for its Cantonese cuisine and its spacious, blessedly quiet sanctuary of a dining room. Why should Angelenos, with our own riches in the San Gabriel Valley, dine here? For the exquisite care given to indigenous Australian seafood. Subtle, masterful seasoning highlights the filigreed meat of briny mud crab, or the scallop-like bounce and lobster sweetness of pearl meat, the consumer-friendly name given to the adductor muscle of Pinctada maxima, oysters native to Northern Australian waters.
17 Market Lane, Melbourne
17 Market Lane, Melbourne
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Embla
Australian $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Equal parts wine bar and restaurant in Melbourne’s hectic Central Business District, Embla thrives as a community center where people of all kinds congregate. Locals leaving work understand its menu caters to myriad tastes, and visitors can soak in the sense of place and people — while enjoying exceptionally smart food. Chef Dave Verheul’s cooking leans global in range of ingredients, but circles the Mediterranean extra-persuasively in dishes like tiny zucchinis, their flowers still attached, over a crackly soft hill of warm ricotta punctuated with oregano and capers. Drink lists cover the beer-cocktail-wine gamut, including nonalcoholic beers and spritzes.
122 Russell St., Melbourne
122 Russell St., Melbourne
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Builders Arms Hotel
Australian $$
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(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
“What is the best pub in Melbourne?” is not only a restaurant-guide category unto itself, but a separate social study altogether. Pubs here overlap into every aspect of life: family dinner, trivia night, third dates, listening to your favorite local band and, sure, unwinding with friends with a few shots of whiskey when the week is over. For the visiting American who appreciates a sprawling, historic building (constructed in 1853) that has lived many lives and currently is home to a bistro-leaning menu of twice-baked cheese soufflé and dill fish pie? The Builders Arms Hotel, perched on a busy commercial street in the boho-hip Fitzroy inner suburb, fits the bill precisely.
211 Gertrude St., Fitzroy
211 Gertrude St., Fitzroy
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Tipo 00
Australian Italian $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
As Los Angeles is home to the largest population of Iranians outside of Iran, or Armenians outside of Armenia, or Thais outside of Thailand, Melbourne claims one of the largest Italian immigrant communities outside of Italy, with deep, multigenerational and constantly evolving influence on the city’s culinary culture. Tipo 00 is defining in its modern Italian-Melburnian vibes: smallish space, casual wine bar atmosphere, serious pasta. Plates such as spaghetti in brothy sorrel sauce, with a lobster-size king prawn nesting on top, are both familiar and mind-expanding. Dinner reservations can be tough; lunch is easier to book and equally wonderful.
361 Little Bourke St., Melbourne
361 Little Bourke St., Melbourne
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Bar Olo
Australian Italian $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Italian wine bars are a category of their own in Melbourne: Everyone has opinions and favorites. Bar Olo, an offshoot of the more formal Scopri a block up the street, stands out for the particular warmth and clarity in its details. A honeycomb glow soaks the tiny room. Wood paneling has the right, knotty-rich shade of retro cool. Retuned cocktails — say, a negroni with thyme-infused gin — set a suave tone. Two must-have dishes: an antipasto platter, perfect alongside drinks, that includes a pile of the savory Sicilian doughnuts called zeppole, and spoja lorda, ridged cheese-stuffed pasta squares, traditional to Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, dressed with rabbit ragu and gorgeously rumpled onto a plate.
165 Nicholson St., Carlton
165 Nicholson St., Carlton
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Serai
Filipino Australian $$
(Jana Langhorst)
Food-obsessed Angelenos may recall last decade’s dynamic moment for Filipino restaurants in Southern California, resonating still in local greats like Kuya Lord and Lasita. Serai taps into the same energy, with the flame on high. The restaurant hides at the end of a short alley (or “laneway,” as Melburnians say) off a tight, busy street in the Central Business District. Chef and owner Ross Magnaye rethinks cornerstone Filipino favorites — lumpia, kare kare, inasal — with seasonal Australian meats and produce. If you’re curious to try kangaroo, Magnaye’s version grilled in the style of kilawin, tender and splashed with vinegar sauce, is fantastic. There are tacos filled with pork’s head sisig. A glass of plummy Shiraz matches splendidly.
7 Racing Club Lane, Melbourne
7 Racing Club Lane, Melbourne
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Gimlet
Australian European $$$$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
A sweeping brasserie room with tufted banquettes, handsome tiled floors around the center bar and sheer drapes over the multistory windows through which seeps a heaven’s-gate white light. The kind of pro staff that Googles the names of every guest before arrival and seems to jot notes about your penchants for wine or tastes in desserts. Caviar and sharply dressed salads and steaks with a side of fries. Gimlet, inspired by the architecture and appetites of mid-20th-century Chicago, is Melbourne’s presiding power restaurant. Late-night crepes suzette are an appropriate showstopper finale, and the restaurant’s nearby Apollo Inn is a worldly hideaway for a spectacular cocktail before or after dinner.
33 Russell St., Melbourne
33 Russell St., Melbourne
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Manzé
Australian Mauritian $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Nagesh Seethiah was born on Mauritius. In his hands, the island’s Creole foodways and its many colonizing influences (Indian, French and Chinese among them) converge into thrilling, constantly evolving personal narrative cooking he presents in two prix fixe options, lunch or dinner. Snacks such as an inspired pairing of persimmon and salt fish might segue to his reimagined vindaye, a quintessential Mauritian spiced fish dish. Look for specials too. I devoured a whole crab special, served with a delicate roti, until my forearms were covered in masala butter. Ask the staff about Seethiah’s selection of Mauritian sipping rums for a liquid dessert.
Shop 2/1/5 Errol St., North Melbourne
Shop 2/1/5 Errol St., North Melbourne
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Malin
Australian French $$$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Chef Clement Pilatre made a dish at Malin last year he called “Moroccan gnocchi,” and I’ve never stopped thinking about it. Riffing on flavors he recalled from visiting Marrakesh with his Moroccan wife, Clara, Pilatre created a half-moon potato dumpling filled with couscous, goat cheese and spices typical to a tagine, including ras el hanout. Four sauces emanate across the plate like sunbeams: chickpea, date, spinach and carrot. It was technical and singular and prismatic in flavor. A virtuoso like Pilatre is difficult to label, and so is Malin — an elegant, neutral-toned dining room where co-owner Tash Sorensen pours intriguing French varietals and sets a tone so serene, the world outside drifts away. It recently shifted from a la carte to a short, imaginatively French tasting menu, but Pilatre remains in the kitchen, so I say go.
687 Rathdowne St., Carlton North
687 Rathdowne St., Carlton North
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Navi
Australian $$$$
(Ed Sloane)
“What is Australian food?” is a big, thorny question that, as when applied to “American” food, has a million answers and no finite conclusion. In fine dining realms, two decades ago, Ben Shewry began setting new examples at Melbourne’s Attica by treating indigenous ingredients with overdue value and evoking a sense of the land in his modernist cooking. At his earth-toned jewel box restaurant Navi, chef Julian Hills is walking a compelling middle path. He and his team serve a flowing tasting menu, well-paced and not too long, in which one can taste Australian delicacies — bush tomatoes, green ants, emu, seafoods and produce in their best seasons — in not-too-outrageous combinations or contexts for AU$195 per person. Alongside, delve into mind-opening Australian wine and spirits nearly impossible to find outside the country.
83b Gamon St., Yarraville
83b Gamon St., Yarraville
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Kafeneion
Australian Greek $$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Melbourne has one of the largest Greek populations outside of Greece, and Kafeneion — part of the Melbourne Supper Club complex run by veteran restaurateur Con Christopoulos and situated across from the Parliament House — is an enveloping first stop for experiencing the culture’s culinary influence on the city. The scene is raucous, the quick-witted servers move fast, and the cooking feels close to the source. Fill a table with whirled dips, lemony Greek salad and platters of oregano-scented lamb and roasted chicken over saucy orzo. Want to continue the party? See if you can wrangle space for a drink upstairs on the third-floor patio overlooking Fitzroy Gardens and the urban landscape beyond.
First Floor/161 Spring St., Melbourne
First Floor/161 Spring St., Melbourne
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Tzaki
Australian Greek $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
At his tiny, animated bar, chef Alex Xinis is forging new definitions of “Modern Greek cuisine.” The unfussy menu changes weekly, propelled by seasonality and imagination. Dishes like moussaka layered with crab meat, or goat meat and green beans baked in bechamel, land in front of you sizzling from the heat of the oven’s burning logs. Use a round of charred, puffed flatbread to scoop braised chickpeas and split pea dip sharpened with black garlic. It isn’t overkill to bookend the meal with cheese: smoked saganaki topped with soft, whole figs preserved in honey and black pepper to start; wondrous, salty-sweet feta cheesecake to finish. Tzaki opens for lunch and serves food straight through to dinner. I left aching for Los Angeles to have a restaurant like this.
31 Ballarat St., Yarraville
31 Ballarat St., Yarraville
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Abla's
Lebanese Australian $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
The Lebanese restaurant that Abla Amad began in 1979 and continues to run with her family remains a thriving Melbourne institution, deservedly. Her cooking centers the kind of homestyle dishes on which every family has personal variations. Taste her individual finesse in the seven-spice mixture flickering through the ground lamb in her signature riz a djej (or simply “chicken and rice” on the menu), the buttery quality of the olive oil in her loubieh (green beans simmered with tomato and onion), and the deft hand with koussa (thin zucchini filled with an herbed rice mixture and set in tomato broth).
109 Elgin St., Carlton
109 Elgin St., Carlton
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The Rocket Society
Wine Bars Lebanese Australian $$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Cheekily named for a nascent space program in Beirut launched by students in the early 1960s, Joseph Abboud’s Lebanese wine bar is a spinoff from his next-door flagship restaurant Rumi. Wood paneling, clean lines and 1970s-era mounted speakers give the tiny space an air of mid-century modern cool. Sandwiches dominate the daytime menu. Evenings bring a deeper selection of creatively liberated Lebanese cooking, including mezze (hummus paired with fish and pine nuts, and a feta-spiked version of ejje, an herbed omelet) and small skewers of meats blasted with tahini or toum or hot sauce. Even better than wine with this food? Glasses of cloudy, appetite-stoking arak.
2 Village Ave., Brunswick East
2 Village Ave., Brunswick East
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Chiaki
Japanese Coffee $
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Breakfast is a part of Melbourne’s civic identity. For an expression of the morning meal not seen enough in L.A., the ochazuke set at this sunny corner cafe will ease you into the day. Choose a centerpiece dish like sesame-glazed salmon or vegetables seasoned with ume and shiso over rice. It arrives on a tray, surrounded by small plates that might include braised shiitake mushroom, wobbly onsen egg, yuzu-scented ceviche and sweet potato glossed with caramel. The tea and coffee selections are concise and top-tier.
49 Peel St., Collingwood
49 Peel St., Collingwood
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Proud Mary and Aunty Peg's
Coffee Australian $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Among coffee geeks, “pilgrimage” isn’t too strong a word to describe visiting the Collingwood neighborhood cafe owned by barista/roaster/industry visionary Nolan Hirte and his wife, Shari. Nolan was one of the leaders who built on Melbourne’s early coffee culture, established by Italian immigrants and their daily espresso habits in the mid-20th century. After Nolan took a tour of America’s burgeoning third-wave coffee shops in the mid-2000s, he returned to Melbourne determined to push the expressive possibilities of filter coffee even further.
At the cafe, the drink menu — whether drip, espresso drinks or pour-overs — includes flavor descriptions that can resemble wine-tasting notes, but there’s nothing fussy about the experience, or the easygoing breakfast and lunch options. Pour-over freaks looking for the highbrow deep dive should walk two blocks to Aunty Peg’s, the Hirtes’ laboratory/counter/roasting facility, for two or three rounds of Panamanian geishas.
Proud Mary —172 Oxford St., Collingwood
Aunty Peg’s — 200 Wellington St., Collingwood
At the cafe, the drink menu — whether drip, espresso drinks or pour-overs — includes flavor descriptions that can resemble wine-tasting notes, but there’s nothing fussy about the experience, or the easygoing breakfast and lunch options. Pour-over freaks looking for the highbrow deep dive should walk two blocks to Aunty Peg’s, the Hirtes’ laboratory/counter/roasting facility, for two or three rounds of Panamanian geishas.
Proud Mary —172 Oxford St., Collingwood
Aunty Peg’s — 200 Wellington St., Collingwood
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Brother Baba Budan
Coffee Australian $
Named after a legendary Sufi who, according to popular Indian lore, smuggled seven coffee seeds out of Yemen and gave birth to the crop in India, Brother Baba Budan is the tiny original bar and retail outlet for Melbourne’s Seven Seeds Coffee Roasters. It’s located in the city’s Central Business District, chockablock with office workers and, given the area’s many hotels and jet-lagged visitors, coffee options are legion. For impeccable espresso drinks from one of the country’s specialty coffee pioneers, start here.
359 Little Bourke St., Melbourne
359 Little Bourke St., Melbourne
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Path
Coffee Australian $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
A four-minute walk from Queen Victoria Market, Path excels at great coffee and also in its extra efforts toward user friendliness. It’s the kind of place you’d walk in and order a flat white on the run and, even in a rush, notice its unusual smoothness. Founders Josh Manitta and Ashlee Larsen came up with a smart visual flavor chart for their ever-changing coffees, to help identify hints of citrus or berry or chocolate without florid descriptions. That said, it’s another great hangout for note-swapping pour-over wonks who congregate at the short bar.
362 Victoria St., North Melbourne
362 Victoria St., North Melbourne
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Barragunda Dining
Australian $$$$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Drive an hour from Melbourne’s center to Cape Schanck, at the southernmost tip of Mornington Peninsula, and the breathtaking estate that houses one of the region’s newest fine-dining luminaries. The dining room feels almost Scandinavian in its sweeping use of woods, at once minimalist and luxurious. But what chef Simone Watts creates for the plate, much of it culled from surrounding farmlands, conveys the Australian here and now. The tasting menu is concise and ever-changing: Mine began with fleshy whole tomato over stracciatella with herb oil and finished with a cardamom-scented peach pastry, with cocktails duly reflecting the growing seasons and worldly wine selections.
113 Cape Schanck Road, Cape Schanck
113 Cape Schanck Road, Cape Schanck
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Brae
Australian $$$$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Chef Dan Hunter engineers a travel-worthy tasting menu blowout (at AU$370 per person) set on a working farm in a small town that’s about a two-hour drive from Melbourne. His cuisine entwines the local and the modernist: geometrical plating and honest, earthbound deliciousness, coupled with exceptionally personable service. A salad course famously comprises nearly 80 elements plucked from just outside the restaurant’s walls. If, after pitch-perfect cocktails and flights of wine pairings you’d prefer an overnight stay, plan ahead and book one of the property’s six design-forward guest suites.
4285 Cape Otway Road, Birregurra
4285 Cape Otway Road, Birregurra
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Tedesca Osteria
Australian Italian Wine Bars $$$$
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Chef Brigitte Hafner and hospitality ace James Broadway open their countryside restaurant for lunch service only, Friday through Monday. Dining here is an opportunity to unwind. A set menu, inspired and fed by the surrounding gardens, broadly follows a sequence of snacks, pasta (an incredible duck tortellini with figs and pine nuts during my trip), meat and dessert. Scraping final crumbs of an apple terrine with gingerbread crumble and mascarpone cream, I thought about how the meal shared sensibilities with a Californian-Italian ethos — and how wonderful to experience something familiar yet different, halfway around the world in the exact opposite season from home.
1175 Mornington-Flinders Road, Red Hill
1175 Mornington-Flinders Road, Red Hill
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Chae
Korean Australian $$$
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Admittedly, this six-seat Korean restaurant — in the home of chef Jung Eun Chae, in a rural town 50 miles outside Melbourne — is one of the hardest reservations in Australia. Put your name in for the reservation lottery nonetheless; you might be lucky enough to experience one of the most serene and nourishing seven-course lunches on the planet. Like Kwang Uh of Baroo in L.A., Chae studied with Korean chef and nun Jeong Kwan in South Korea. The influence shows, from fermented jangs she makes herself to a pure chicken noodle soup, its intense broth sharpened only by thin triangles of radish kimchi.
33 Mountain Road, Cockatoo
33 Mountain Road, Cockatoo
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