Melbourne’s best restaurants according to a local food writer

With access to abundant world-class produce, Melbourne is one of the best places in the world to dine. Impeccable food available at every price point keeps the scene vibrant, dynamic and competitive, and if you think you’ve had an excellent meal, someone will always tell you there is something even better around the corner. Melbourne is also vastly multicultural, so you can easily eat one of the best bowls of pasta you’ve had in your life for lunch, followed by an outstanding example of Peking duck for dinner without even leaving the suburb. And once you’ve finished your meal, you can explore all the best bars Melbourne’s neighbourhoods have to offer. From the CBD to the reaches of Kew and Brunswick, here are the best places to eat in Melbourne.

CBD

Flower Drum

Best for: High-end Cantonese food with old-school service
Location: 17 Market Lane, Melbourne, 3000
Price: Mains around 32 AUD

To dine at Flower Drum is to taste legacy and innovation side by side. Cantonese tradition comes from Anthony Lui, executive chef and patriarch of ‘the Drum’, and modernity from his son and general manager, Jason Lui. Expect refined but unstuffy service, knowledgeable recommendations and a high-end wine list, making this spot a favourite for power lunches, special occasions, or for when you just want to have a great time. Order classic yum cha dishes like har gow (5.50 AUD) next to stir fried pearl meat (32 AUD per person) and lamb pockets (32 AUD per serve), which takes advantage of Australian produce and handles it through a Cantonese lens. Not sure what to order? Ask your waiter – who has most likely been working there for the last 20 years – what’s good that day. It’s a guaranteed win.

Embla

Best for: Small plates cooked over open fire and an extensive wine list
Location: 122 Russell Street, Melbourne, 3000
Price: Plates from 9-54 AUD

Did you really go to Melbourne if you didn’t dine at Embla? The thing about this modern Australian restaurant is, even though it’s run by a group of Kiwis, it’s so impossibly Melbourne, it hurts. From the buzzy atmosphere to the enthusiastic but professional service and a wine list that appeals to both experts and newbies, Embla is one of the few venues that has preserved its charm and energy through 245 days of lockdown. The food is centred on cooking over fire, fermentation, or both, while never feeling overworked or like it is pulling focus away from the wine programme. Dining at night feels like you’re going to a party, but for more subdued vibes, book in for a Sunday lunch.

Nomad

Best for: Clandestine basement dining
Location: 187 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 3000
Price: Plates from 8-175 AUD

Nomad is full of surprises. The wine list is expansive and includes a compelling alcohol-free selection that doesn’t just taste like juice. The cocktails are considered and come with allergy warnings (nuts, lactose, shellfish). The food is based around Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavours that work seamlessly together, such as with the za’atar-dusted wood fired flatbread along with Nomad’s house-made charcuterie selection – both of which are some of the best examples of house-made products in the city. The food is a celebration of local produce, squeezed for all the flavour and texture it can provide. Nomad is hugely accommodating of dietary requirements, so if you have a complicated group of friends, consider this venue your holy grail.

Lee Ho Fook

Best for: Contemporary Chinese cuisine you can impress the ancestors with
Location: 11-15 Duckboard Place, Melbourne, 3000
Price: Plates from 12-280 AUD

Chef Victor Liong is doing something incredibly special with Lee Ho Fook. It’s modern Chinese food, sure, but it is a cut above the rest and the kind of place that second-generation kids wouldn’t be afraid to take their parents to. Liong blends his cultural competency with French training and modern techniques gleaned from his old mentor Mark Best. Expect prawn toast tricked up with sea urchin and salted egg yolk butter, cumin lamb shoulder, and one of the best examples of Peking duck in Melbourne. The wine list is all Australian if you don’t count the short selection of champagnes. Not much of a drinker? The teas have been expertly selected and can be offered as a pairing along the tasting menu.

Tipo 00

Best for: Modern Italian that is so much more than pasta
Location: 361 Little Bourke St, Melbourne, 3000
Price: Plates from 6-58 AUD

Pasta is the main event at Tipo 00 – made in house from the flour that lends the restaurant its name. Tortelli may be filled with goat’s cheese and served with asparagus, and pappardelle may come tangled in braised duck and porcini depending on the seasons, but the tagliolini will always be stained in squid ink and served with tender curls of squid and topped with shaved bottarga. It’s been a mainstay since the venue opened. Desserts are on the playful side, with a dense, brownie-like take on the tiramisu dubbed the Tipomisu, or seasonal tortas of the day that may make use of ingredients like pumpkins. The vibe is casual, bustling and playful, and you’ll always find the place packed shoulder-to-shoulder. Book to avoid disappointment.

North Melbourne

Manzé

Best for: Modern Mauritian in a young, energetic space
Location: Shop 2/1/5 Errol St, North Melbourne, 3051
Price: Plates from 4.50-65 AUD

Manzé is a convergence of ideas by a group of young creatives that just works. It’s co-owned by chef Nagesh Seethiah, who cooks food touched by his own Mauritian heritage, culture writer Osman Faruqi and artist Jason Phu. You could be eating Seethiah’s taro and ginger fritters while listening to a Palestinian pop song, admiring works by an up-and-coming artist as you drink locally made natural wine crafted by women and identified by its traditional place name on the menu. And it’s awesome. The experience is never heavy handed, and everything clicks. Once a month, there is a guest chef cooking a set menu for a mere 40 AUD. The philosophy of the space has always been accessibility, which you’ll experience in the price point and endlessly welcoming energy from the team.

Carlton

Kazuki’s

Best for: Japanese fine dining in Little Italy
Location: 121 Lygon Street, Carlton, 3053
Price: five-course tasting menu 180 AUD; seven-course tasting menu 220 AUD

Technical precision, creativity, surprise and care are the things you can expect from Japanese fine-dining restaurant Kazuki’s. Firstly, the restaurant is located on Melbourne’s Lygon Street, which is often known as Little Italy. Stepping into Kazuki’s feels like you’ve been transported to a dimension where time doesn’t exist. The real surprise is that chef Kazuki serves you ingredients like ‘nduja, black pudding and Delice de Bourgogne as part of a tasting menu that still tastes unmistakably Japanese. If you’re a champagne lover, you’re in for a treat: this restaurant has one of the best lists in the city, along with a rare range of Japanese sakes, whiskies and spirits you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else.

Collingwood

Smith and Daughters

Best for: Vegan food that doesn’t taste like vegan food
Location: 107 Cambridge Street, Collingwood, 3066
Price: Plates from 7-20 AUD

Fun and objectively tasty are not descriptions usually associated with vegan food, but this is exactly what the food is like at Smith and Daughters. You won’t find sad imitations of burgers or be subjected to tofu as stand-ins for animal protein; instead, your mind will bend with the sorcery of chef and owner Shannon Martinez that will leave you asking, ‘Are you sure that was vegan?’ The new iteration of the restaurant is about snacks, family memories and nostalgia, so expect dim sim (an Australian snack based on sui mai dumplings) served with vincotto soy, corn dogs, and its vegan take on a Fillet o’ fish. Don’t skip the tiramisu – vegans travel from all over the country just to eat this version because there is no stodginess or lingering soy flavour. Prepare yourself for a mind-altering experience.

Brunswick

Etta

Best for: World-class dining with neighbourhood vibes
Location: 60 Lygon Street, Brunswick, 3057
Price: Plates from 5-54 AUD

If you prefer your dining style casual, your wine exemplary and your food exciting without running into the glitterati of Melbourne, Etta is for you. The food is bold – influenced by chef Lorcan Kan’s Malaysian heritage – but controlled, never smacking you in the face hard enough to deter you from delving into the impeccable, mid-sized wine list. Dishes are accented by sauces and fruits, like wood-fired beef and sambal, hot smoked duck with red coconut curry and rambutan, cumin spiced lamb and green tomatoes, which will make you want to order the entire menu. Just make sure you leave room for the chilli oil parfait, a dessert that expresses the fruitiness of chillies, and a beguiling example of Kan’s style of cookery.

Richmond

Anchovy

Best for: Uncompromised Vietnamese food cooked through a second-generation lens
Location: 338 Bridge Road, Richmond, 3121
Price: Plates from 9-55 AUD

Anchovy is named after the fish that produces the liquid gold that is the anchor of Vietnamese cookery: fish sauce. Chef Thi Le is a chef’s chef in that she will do everything the hard way to achieve the results she wants. For example, instead of buying silver needle noodles to make the green papaya, radish relish and king brown mushroom claypot, she makes the dough and rolls each noodle by hand. Those cold cuts on the Vietnamese charcuterie platter? Not only did she prepare them from scratch, she bought a whole pig and butchered it herself. The fish sauce? Yep, you guessed it: a two-year fermentation project made from the last commercial catch out of Port Phillip Bay. Don’t have time for a full sit-down meal? Try her banh mi made with just as much care next door at Ca Com.

Kew

Sushi On

Best for: Dynamic omakase made with mostly Australian seafood
Location: 1135 Burke Road, Kew, 3101
Price: Lunch at 149 AUD, dinner at 220 AUD

A sushi omakase is a sushi omakase, right? Aside from the type of rice the chef chooses and how they season it, there really isn’t much difference these days with the globalisation of food systems. Well, that was before chef Yong opened Sushi On, where he only serves eight to ten guests at a time. While most Japanese restaurants boast about the seafood they purchase from Japan, chef Yong chooses to work with as much Australian catch as possible. This might mean nigiri with King George whiting or garfish from Lakes Entrance, or local abalone served with its liver. More traditional fish is flawlessly processed – air dried, cured or marinated – making it the most exciting omakase you can eat in Melbourne right now. Bookings are made a month in advance but keep an eye on the Instagram page for last-minute cancellations.

Prahran

Hopper Joint

Best for: High-end Sri Lankan without the price tag
Location: 157 Greville street, Prahran, 3181
Price: Plates from 9.90-26.90 AUD, hopper set with unlimited hoppers for 49.90 AUD per person

When the owners of this Sri Lankan hopper restaurant are one-part seasoned restaurateur Jason Jones and one-part professional interior designer with a Sri Lankan background Brahman Perera, you know you’re in for a good time. The service is seamless and generous, with Perera’s mother on the floor in the evenings teaching the uninitiated how to eat hoppers (with your hands) and making menu suggestions. Dinner bookings must opt in for the hopper set, which includes a seeni and pol sambol, two curries of your choice, an egg hopper, and unlimited plain hoppers to mop it all up with. Yes, unlimited. So far, the record is 15. If you’re not looking to break any records, don’t skip the short eats; in particular, the cuttlefish dosai. Fear not eating with your hands, there is a large, multi-person basin in the middle of the room for handwashing. Get involved.

Beaconsfield

O. My

Best for: The ultimate farm-to-table experience where you can let your hair down
Location: 70 Princes Highway, Beaconsfield, 3807
Price: four-course seasonal menu 165 AUD, seven-course seasonal menu 230 AUD

Unpretentious is the first word that comes to mind when thinking of O. My. On paper, the restaurant sounds stuffy. There is a dedicated farm the team use to supply all the produce needed at the restaurant, there’s a minimal waste focus, proteins that don’t come from the farm are hyper-local, the wine list is geared towards slow production, and there’s a strong sense of place. But here’s the thing – it couldn’t be further from stuffy. Chayse, who runs front of house and is in charge of the wine, refuses to be called a sommelier. Instead, he calls himself a wine waiter, isn’t allergic to carrying plates, and is as likely to serve you a bottle of premier cru Chablis as he is a sneaky shot of tequila. The food is intensely seasonal and exciting, and you could receive a pasta made of dried and milled pumpkin flesh, or a tartlet of rock flathead rib mousse with fresh radish, horseradish gel and pickled lemon myrtle flowers. Sit back and enjoy the ride. There’s a reason this family-run fine-diner racks up accolades every award season.

Cockatoo

Chae

Best for: Slow, medicinal Korean food
Location: 33 Mountain Road, Cockatoo 3781
Price: 130 AUD per person

Have you ever entered a lottery to dine at a restaurant before? To eat at Chae, you submit your details into its booking system and the winners are drawn at random to dine. Jung-Eun Chae’s house-made ferments of kimchis, gochujang, doenjang, soy sauces and fruit vinegars are served to only six people at a time, in the three services she runs a week, in the kitchen of her home. The menu changes with the seasons but expect to find different ages of kimchi and lesser-known Korean dishes like pine-nut porridge, mushroom japchae highlighted with sesame oil made from Chae’s mother’s farm, or spicy braised mackerel with radish and multigrain rice. Want to make your experience last longer? Chae sells her sauces, drinking vinegars and kimchis to take home. Not lucky enough to win the lottery? Keep an eye on their Instagram page for pop-ups and collaborations in Melbourne.