7 Restaurants You Must Try in Melbourne
In a city celebrated for its diverse culinary scene, we pick out seven of the best restaurants so you don’t have to.
Work your way through the short but exquisite menu, which includes calamari sheared into ribbons and served with clams, grapefruit, oregano and fermented elderflower. You’ll want to save room for dessert: cidered pear, chocolate, pumpkin seed, licorice and brown bread ice cream.
Frank Camorra’s tapas bar changed the way Melburnians dined. Make sure to order at least one anchoa (a Calabrian anchovy on toast with smoked tomato sorbet) and the bocadillo (a toasted sandwich made from brioche, pate and Pedro Ximenez foam) is a must-try.
New Zealand-born Shewry has become Melbourne’s most celebrated chef. Probably best known for his dish of potato cooked in its own soil, the evolving set menu (there’s a separate and equally impressive vegetarian one) is much more expressive than that particular concept might suggest.
Vue de Monde
The 55th-floor setting for Shannon Bennett’s Vue de monde is as show-stopping as his food. Bennett uses fine local ingredients – wallaby, eel, saltbush and pine mushrooms all appear on the menu when available – and the techniques of classical French cooking to conjure the epitome of modern Australian cuisine.
Rosa Mitchell’s latest restaurant is a sleek, slightly corporate space at the banking and legal end of the CBD but the Italian fare is as authentic as her fans have come to expect. Choose from textbook plates such as carpaccio – made here with Gippsland beef – or a juicy veal saltimbocca scented with sage and prosciutto.
Feeling hungry?
This always-rocking diner boasts a menu shaped by the cuisine of Thailand with nods to India, Vietnam and other parts of Asia. Go for gooey-in-the-middle son-in-law eggs, roti madtarbak and, for those with mouths of asbestos, hot and sour duck-liver salad.
The vegetarian restaurant in Fitzroy packs a punch. Prepare yourself for such fare as ricotta and rye gnocchi with pumpkin mousse and blueberry compote and cold soba noodle salad with wasabi cashews.
