Australia is a land of immigrants, and Melbourne, the country’s second-largest city, situated between Port Phillip Bay and mountain ranges and spanning the Yarra River, is one of the world’s most culturally diverse cities.
Food is a gateway to culture. Melbourne’s rich immigration history is reflected in its culture, thanks in part to its indisputably cosmopolitan cuisine. Multiple waves of immigration have left their mark on the city, from its long-standing passion for coffee to a European drinking culture to a plethora of Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine. Melbourne has any food you can think of.
Food Scene of Melbourne
Melbourne food scene is a beautiful mash-up of nationalities and styles, but one word permeates the city: They have their own food culture.
The top cafés and restaurants prioritise sustainability. Green is the new black in Australia’s culinary capital, from rooftop solar panels to chook food composting. To properly comprehend Melbourne, we must examine everything it consumes, from cheap takeaway outlets serving deep-fried dim sims to tasting-menu temples extolling native foods such as Saltbush and Finger lime.
One of the famous chefs of Australia is Andrew McConnell. Andrew Mcconnell is a chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author located in Melbourne. Andrew McConnell, born and raised in Melbourne, has built a name for himself. His experiences in London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai have affected his efforts to open his in Australia. Andrew has a significant following in Melbourne, having been named Chef of the Year by The Age on two occasions.
Mr Mcconnell is also the Executive Chef and Owner of many of the best restaurants Melbourne, each with its distinct character. All of them are located in remarkably various Melbourne neighbourhoods. Andrew Mcconnell’s best restaurants Melbourne include Cumulus Inc. (Flinderslane), and Cutler & Co. (Fitzroy) opened, followed by Golden Fields (St Kilda); each location is spaciously constructed with distinctive architecture and food that matches the surroundings.
A Tour To The Best Restaurants Melbourne
While coming to the famous menu of Melbourne, it includes Smashed Avocado on toast for breakfast, a Banh Sandwich from a Vietnamese bakery for lunch, and handmade Spaghetti at a new natural wine bar for evening — the Melbournian diet has it all. With a few flat whites or magic during the day and a sauce-smothered halal snack pack for a nightcap, you’ll be able to eat Melbourne in one sitting.
Thousands of unique restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops are available, serving cuisines from all over the world, namely Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Most of the Restaurants are situated in Central Business District (CBD).
The interiors of Melbourne restaurants are very astonishing. Some of the best restaurants Melbourne are decorated dimly lit, fairy lights, floor, and wall made up of exposed brick make the dining more beautiful.
Here we have a list of the 14 best restaurants Melbourne. They are;
1. Cumulus Inc.
Andrew McConnell founded Cumulus Inc. in 2008. It is located on Flinders Lane, Melbourne’s well-known art and fashion district. The space, housed in a historic turn-of-the-century rag trade building, is a bustling social centre that serves fresh and healthful food that highlights the best of Victorian produce.
Tasting Menu of Cumulus Inc.
One of the famous dishes included in the menu is Roasted lamb shoulder. Like Steak frites, Tuna tartare, most restaurants’ renditions of the French bistro classic will be highly typical; after a few bites, the dish will seem dense and heavy.
Throughout all the menus, creativity could be found. You would like the Fennel pollen to match with great snapper and mussel dish. Do not forget to go for the Fried green tomato and Spanner crab appetiser that tastes like the American South and South-East Asia. It is one of the best restaurants Melbourne where one can have the best la carte menu.
2. Gimlet at Cavendish House
Andrew McConnell’s latest contribution to Melbourne’s dining scene is Gimlet at Cavendish House, located on Russell Street and Flinders Lane. Stepping inside Cavendish House’s magnificent dining room on the ground level, a 1920s Chicago-style building in the CBD, Chef Andrew McConnell has transformed this old 1920s property into a cocktail bar with a dining room and finally to one of the best restaurants Melbourne.
Tasting Menu of Gimlet
Oysters and snacks are available with shared main courses of top wood-fired meats and shellfish. Caviar service is available. The bar also offers a comprehensive list of world-class wines and classic cocktails. With soaring ceilings, art deco columns, and sentinel rows of champagne bottles, it evokes the big hotels of London and New York.
Seafood salad with Briny sea succulents and Pale treviso leaves, Black vinegar sauce, topped with a house-made Summer tomato vinegar with Mussels, Shaved calamari, and Poached prawns. There’s also a bowl of Saffron rice, Duck meat poached with spices and served with sharp Radicchio leaves, Garlic butter fries, and a savoury Anchovy Danish. The Kingfish Crudo with preserved Lemon Nuoc Cham, Horseradish, and Caperberries is light and refreshing to the extreme.
Because the kitchen has a wood oven, roasted meats and vegetables are a big part of the tasting menu. Certain theatrical, vintage accents enhance the old-world appeal. Consider baked potatoes with taleggio and sage. If you don’t want to order the wood-fired cheesecake with poached rhubarb for dessert, a wandering cheese trolley offers both local and international selections.
3. Cellar Bar
The Cellar Bar is one of the best restaurants Melbourne where we can get the best Italian food, and it belongs to the Grossi family. It is situated at the top of Bourke St. Mr Samuel Wynn purchased the Cellar bar in 1918.
Tasting Menu of Cellar Bar
The Cellar Bar demonstrates how comforting basic Italian food can be at any time of day. It is where we can get the most fabulous Spaghetti Bolognese in Melbourne. A combination of beef, chicken, and pork mince contributes to a flavorful but not overly thick sauce, while Cloves and Nutmeg provide a subtle earthy, grounding touch to the dish.
Another favourite is Tortellini Di Zucca (pumpkin) with scorched butter and crisp sage. Risi e Bisi, a Venetian risotto with pancetta and peas, speaks of the wooden spoon coaxed starch from the rice in every silky, creamy bite.
4. Vue de Monde
Vue de Monde is a restaurant with enough celebrity visits and history that many Melbournians believe they are familiar with. It spent six years at Normandy Chambers before moving to the top of the Rialto building in 2011.
Vue de Monde is one of the best restaurants Melbourne where we can get French food. It was just a decent French bistro in Carlton in 2000, with lesser-known Shannon Bennett at the helm. The most recently taken to the helm is Executive Chef Hugh Allen. Allen was promoted from Sous chef to Chef de cuisine in 2019.
Tasting Menu of Vue de Monde
Sea Urchin with a bunya nut mousse, roasted South Australian kangaroo with indigenous mountain pepper, is a few of the most well-known meals. Barbequed baby corn with Macadamia miso, Wild garlic, Marron heads, Barramundi bones, Smoked salmon and Tasmanian mussels have all been highlighted in the past. The most fun thing is that the Chef describes each dish to their customers.
While coming to the structure, it has an open kitchen. The tables are covered in kangaroo leather (installed by the Captains of Industry) and are large enough to seat an entire family but mostly reserved for couples. They’re filled with a simple scattering of river stones that work as salt and pepper shakers, butter pots, and cutlery holders.
5. Carlton Wine Room
Carlton Wine Room, which opened in 2018, is a remarkable 19th-century building. It is located on the leafy intersection of Drummond and Faraday Streets. It is now home to a team that includes Chef John Paul Twomey, former head of Cutler & Co., the McConnell group’s senior cook, head chef at Gilson in South Yarra, and founder Andrew Joy, former head Marion.
There’s a marble bar in the front, and in the middle of the high-ceilinged space, there’s an oval communal table with rows of backlit glassware instead of Booze.
Tasting Menu of Carlton Wine Room
The food menu is an excellent version of modern Australian cuisine with European flavours that pair well with the wine bar and changes seasonally.
There’s a Kingfish Crudo, a monochrome dish of rough slices of transparent Napa cabbage and shaved Horseradish on top of thick raw fish slices over a smear of crème. Grilled broccolini with cured egg yolk shavings, fat bacon lardons, a vinaigrette parmesan, cream, and egg yolk sauce, shaved objects resurface. There’s also a half roast chicken, which is delicate and crisp-skinned and served with a light, mousse-like aioli, confit potato rounds, raw sorrel leaves laid flat and jus.
Carlton emphasis on comfort food, such as Caesar salad with salty lardons, rose, parmesan cream, preserved egg yolk, and rum baba with more than its fair share of sugarcane champagne. When you combine this with a wine list full of natural producers and attentive service, you’ve got yourself a “fine-dining” trifecta.
6. Sunda Dining
Khan Nguyen owns Sunda, which is regarded as one of Melbourne’s famous South-East Asian best restaurants in the city’s theatre district. The head chef, Khanh Nguyen of Melbourne’s Sunda, who hails from Sydney’s inner west, has made waves since the restaurant opened in early 2018, blending south-east Asian flavours and Australian cuisine.
He began his career as Apprentice in Luke Nguyen’s iconic Darlinghurst restaurant, Red Lantern, where he was impressed by Luke Nguyen. Dan Hong, a well-known Sydney chef, approached Khan Nguyen and invited him to assist him at his new Cantonese restaurant. Nguyen went from a kitchen that produced 30 covers per day to one that made 500 per day. Hong upgraded him to Sous Chef within three months, which he kept for three years.
The opportunity to climb Sunda, on the other hand, came out of nowhere. After a few failed attempts, consulting chef Tony Tan approached Khan Nguyen to see whether he was interested in opening an Asian restaurant for the Halim Group, which runs Melbourne’s Hotel, Windsor. Originally meant to serve Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine, Khan Nguyen managed to include Vietnamese to the mix, resulting in Sunda’s distinct South-East Asian cuisine.
Tasting Menu of Sunda
At Sunda, Sourdough with “forbidden” (black) rice, coated with soy sauce and palm sugar, is the best. Banh Mi-inspired pâté en croûte with an Umami-packed Maggi seasoning jelly, Chicken crackling with Pasta dishes are also some of the tastiest ones.
All the dishes blend native ingredients with modern flavours, which gives us comfort food. Try the Dry-aged duck and the main course, suckling pig influenced by Indonesian Babi Guling, paired with bush and green tomato sambals. A duck ham inspired by Peking duck, cured pig neck with smoked egg cream, and beef tartare is also available.
Sunda Diving is one of the best restaurants Melbourne where we can get classic food like Roti with Vegemite curry. The roti is covered with a kaffir lime, curry oil and served with a Vegemite-tinged curry that adds a Goldilocks-level of umami. It’s a magnificent, decadent dish that truly unites two cultures. The drinks list include a milk drink instead of an olive and a Calamansi drink with Four Pillars Olive Leaf gin and a bush tomato in place of an olive.
Local Avani, Main Ridge, Jams heed, and Jayden Ong wines, classics from France and Italy, Chilean skin-contact drops, and two dozen by-the-glass alternatives are some of the rich flavours.
You will get to taste broken rice with duck grease, fermented duck sausage, and egg yolk in a clay pot. There is also dry-aged duck with smoky canola Nero, Hasselback potatoes atop “green” sauce, a Hong Kong seasoning called Typhoon Shelter, and Mi Goreng-like egg noodles with black garlic available in service.
7. Supernormal
Supernormal is a popular, all-day Asian restaurant with a modern Japanese style. The dining area is combined by a large open kitchen and wine bar (ideal for single or pair eating), a secret location downstairs for parties, special occasions, live music, events. It is one of the best restaurants Melbourne for Japanese food.
Tasting Menu of Supernormal
You can revisit classic dishes here and find some new favourites, thanks to the cuisine and restaurants of Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, and Hong Kong. Supernormal serves a variety of local and foreign beverages, including delectable wines, sake, whiskey, and cocktails.
8. Cutler & Co.
Cutler & Co, along with Cumulus Inc., Marion, and Supernormal, is one of Andrew McConnell’s best restaurants Melbourne.
Tasting Menu of Cutler & Co.
The a la carte menu is structured similarly to that of Cumulus Inc. It starts with Oysters, Duck breast with Parsley and Horseradish, and Buckwheat pikelets with caviar as modest, refined meals. You may find Violet ice cream, chocolate mousse, hazelnut chiffon, clove meringue as well.
Proteins and local seafood are usually matched with seasonal vegetables, unique flavours like dandelion, sorrel in the appetisers and main courses.
9. Archer’s
Archer’s provides timeless cuisine influenced by local ingredients in a sleek, refined dining area at the Melbourne Marriott Docklands. Archer’s is now on its path to swiftly establishing itself as one of the best restaurants Melbourne with five-star service.
Tasting Menu of Archer’s
The menu at Archer is ‘influenced by local,’ and Michelin-starred chef Alex Drobysz prepares it. A ‘Melbourne Style’ a la carte menu is provided to its guests and also follows the traditional hotel buffet with food being served to the table. Archer’s follow the farm-to-fork strategy that goes beyond paddock to plate.
10. Andrew’s Hamburgers
For burger lovers, Andrew’s Hamburgers is one of the best restaurants in Melbourne. It is located in Albert Park and is a long-running Melbourne burger staple. Andrew’s Hamburgers has been feeding burgers to the city’s residents since 1939. Back then, Wasabi mayo, guacamole, and other gourmet fillings didn’t arrive on the shores of Melbourne.
Tasting Menu of Andrew’s Hamburgers
Andrew’s burger patties are legendary, serving classics like The Lot and the Five-O Hawaiian. Chicken steak, and the original minced beef, seasoned merely with salt and pepper, are the constants on its menu list. You will find many options like egg, bacon, onion, tomato, cheese, pineapple, or beetroot. Souvlaki or a typical side like potato cakes, Dim sims, or Spring rolls are also available. Veggie patties and gluten-free buns are the sole concessions to the “gourmet” audience.
11. Mamasita
Mamasita Restaurant and Bar, on Collins Street at the top end of Melbourne’s CBD, is the city’s favourite Mexican restaurant. Mamasita specialises in modern Mexican cuisine that incorporates traditional and regional skills and is complemented by a fantastic selection of handmade agave spirits. This trendy cafe has elegant wooden benches, banquettes, and bar stools. It has been one of the best restaurants Melbourne which have authentic taqueria.
Tasting Menu of Mamasita
It is best known for Pickled cabbage, apple, cascabel, and fennel with roasted pork belly. Carve a path with scallop ceviche, apple, cucumber, tobiko, lime, onion, green chilli, house-made while sipping tequila. Say goodbye to prawn tacos with morcilla, orange, mint salsa verde, and coriander, and hello to lamb barbacoa with black garlic, peas, confit garlic, and mocha salsa.
12. The Coast
The Coast, a recently remodelled best-known restaurant in Anglesea, offers a local fine dining experience. Evans Magati’s Fine Dining menu at The Coast features a variety of Australian fusion meals made with local produce from the Great Ocean Road and Surf Coast districts.
Tasting Menu of The Coast
It is one of the best restaurants Melbourne, where we have a variety of locally sourced wines and craft beer on the bar menu. In addition to the classics on their extensive cocktail list, you’ll find handmade cocktails from Great Ocean Road Gin and Timboon Distillery.
Some local vendors featured on its menu are great Ocean Road Duck, Ravens Creek Farm, The Apiary Honey, and Great Ocean Road Chocolatier & Ice Creamery.
13. Flower Drum
Flower Drum is a traditional Chinese dance known for its beauty and elegance.
In Melbourne, The Flower Drum is a well-known multi-award-winning Chinese food restaurant. It is in the Melbourne CBD’s Chinatown neighbourhood, right off Bourke st in Market Lane. Their concept of Fine Dining, Cantonese cuisine and dedicated service makes it a Chinese restaurant with the same elements of refinement and delicacy. The restaurant is so popular that it gets booked months in advance.
Since 1975, this storied restaurant has been at the heart of Melbourne’s Asian dining scene and is now one of the best restaurants Melbourne. The magnificent Oriental dining room, complete with cosseting lighting and ruby rugs, is ideal for Cantonese sharing dishes, fruits in the centre. Chef Anthony Lui isn’t afraid to experiment with strange combinations like double-boiled soup with wallaby tail and loganberry. Still, nothing beats his iconic Peking duck, which is made theatrically at your table. Jason, Lui’s son, is in charge of an exceptional wine list and a dedicated front-of-house staff.
Tasting Menu of Flower Drum
Food is something that deserves a lot of attention. Visiting there, you will experience exquisite pouches of fresh-picked Mud crab suspended in a delicious seafood liquor called Xiao long bao. A rich, spicy broth made with wallaby tail and sour lingonberries is simmered long and slow in a clay pot covered in boiling water to pull out the flavour gently. They also have the best Xo sauce. There’s the Barramundi, which is cooked into exquisite fishy noodles with tangerine zest, shallots, and sweet, dry pig sausage in a stir-fry.
14. Box Seafood Restaurant
The Box Seafood Restaurant is situated in the heart of the CBD (Central Business District) on the Paris end of Collins St. The restaurant is famous for an extensive range of fresh Australian produce and fresh Crayfish. It is one of the best restaurants Melbourne, where we can get good seafood and local produce.
The restaurant exhibits an exquisite environment with white-clothed tables decorated with flowers, bright artwork, and velvety curtains. Expect to drool over appetisers like a fried soft-shell crab with ponzu dipping sauce or a King prawn cocktail with watercress citrus salad and house-made sauce, which draw on an abundance of fresh vegetables and area wines.
Tasting Menu of Box Seafood Restaurant
The menu at Box Seafood Restaurant on collins st is sourced from the fresh, most sustainable Victorian and local seafood available at the time. Enjoy Oysters Kilpatrick, crab, bugs, scallops, grilled fish, King prawns, calamari, steamed mussels, and more on specially prepared share platters while drinking a glass of Mad Fish Riesling from South Australia. The best-known dishes include Crayfish Thermidor with Beer-battered chips and a Rocket, pear, Parmesan salad baked in a light mustard and cheese sauce.
Some Other Fine Dining and Wine Bars
Do not worry much if you can’t find a restaurant of your taste from the above list. Search for other best restaurants Melbourne like MoVida Next Door, That Little Restaurant, Stokehouse St Kilda, Neopoli wine bars, Etto Pasta Bar, Punch Lane Wine Bar & Restaurant, Kirk’s Wine Bar, and many more. Restaurants like Butchers Diner, DonDon, and Shanghai Street are cheap eats but among Melbourne’s best restaurants.
It might surprise you, but yes, people do travel for food. They love to taste different dishes as much as they love to explore new places. Are you a food-o-holic too? Get to Melbourne and its fantastic restaurants to taste some of the best dishes in the world. Â
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