Food
Best Restaurants in Melbourne for Modern Australian, Asian, and Wood-Fired Dining
Guide: Melbourne Restaurants Worth Crossing the City For
Melbourne's destination dining is strongest when it expresses place: native Australian ingredients, Cantonese ceremony, Mauritian and Filipino foodways, Japanese counter craft, Portuguese coastal cooking, serious wine, fire, and distinctive rooms. These ten restaurants offer different reasons to reserve.
- AtticaAttica builds a long-form Australian tasting menu around native ingredients, local stories, and Ben Shewry's personal perspective. Current menu notes include crocodile ribs and seasonal produce rather than imported luxury staples. This is a planned, high-cost dinner with limited seatings, not a flexible walk-in meal.
- Vue de mondeVue de monde pairs a multi-course Australian menu with the Rialto's 55th-floor view. Hugh Allen's cooking uses native ingredients in dishes such as salt-cured kangaroo with green ants, marron with finger lime, and billy-tea desserts. Reserve well ahead and request a window table if the view matters.
- Gimlet at Cavendish HouseGimlet occupies a glamorous 1920s building and serves polished European dining from lunch through late supper. The useful order spans Martinis, oysters, Comté tart, coal-grilled T-bone, and tableside crêpes Suzette. It works equally well for a bar seat or a formal reservation.
- MinamishimaMinamishima stages an eighteen-course Edomae-style omakase around a mood-lit sushi counter. Recent dishes include miso-cured John Dory, vinegared mackerel, tempura abalone with liver sauce, and a smoky duck broth. The A$325 menu and fixed seatings make a firm reservation essential.
- MarmeloMarmelo channels Portuguese coastal cooking through Victorian produce and a wood-and-charcoal kitchen. Arroz de marisco arrives packed with grilled, poached, and cured seafood, while olive-oil cheesecake comes from the wood oven. The room is polished enough for an occasion without requiring a tasting-menu commitment.
- SeraiSerai cooks Filipino food over a wood hearth in a lively CBD laneway room. Signature ideas include sisig tacos, lumpia with smoked pineapple, scallop on pandesal, and sticky adobo lamb ribs. Strong cocktails and shareable plates suit groups, but the busiest services reward advance booking.