Why foodies love Melbourne: Try these eateries on your next visit

Big Esso by Mabu Mabu is owned by a First Nations chef and features a wide range of native Australian ingredients. — Visit Victoria

There are few cities around the world that embrace culinary diversity quite as fervently as Melbourne, the capital city of the southeastern state of Victoria in Australia. It is renowned for its bustling laneways, thriving coffee culture and cultural melting pot.

The city is also a meeting point of sorts for global cuisines.

In many ways, Melbourne’s 21st century gastronomic output is the direct result of the mass migration that preceded it for centuries.

It began in the 19th century with the arrival of the first settlers – British inhabitants who quickly displaced the Aboriginal people who had lived there for centuries. Then came the Gold Rush in the 1860s, which in turn resulted in large numbers of Chinese immigrants trying their luck in the hunt for gold.

At the turn of the century, there were migrants from Europe – namely Italy and Greece – and eventually droves of immigrants from Asia – Malaysia, Vietnam, India, the Philippines and Cambodia, to name a few.

As a consequence, there is now a huge diaspora centred in Melbourne. For example, the second largest Greek diaspora outside of Greece is in Melbourne.

This broad mosaic of influences means Melbourne is swathed in both a vibrant, effusive swirl of tradition as well as a burgeoning slant towards fusion, contrasts and constant culinary exchange and inspiration.

Over the years, the growing hyperlocal movement has also resulted in the birth of brand new culinary progeny that takes inspiration from homegrown produce and ingredients like finger limes and bush meat, but just as sharply draws from international fare like Szechuan chilli peppers and Malaysian pandan leaves.

In short, it’s a motley assortment of polaric flavours, ingredients and influences all bound together in one city state. It’s little wonder then that this gastronomic richness has inspired the motivation behind many gourmands’ travels to far-flung Australia.

Here are a few eateries in the city to whet your appetite for your next trip.

The Port Lincoln calamari with Filipino sweet sausage is just one example of the delicious, inspired cooking at Serai. — Serai/Instagram

Serai

A cosy laneway restaurant, Serai serves modern Filipino fare with a distinct Australian heart and soul. The eatery bustles and thrums with activity even on weekday nights and is testament to the persuasive pull that chef-owner Ross Magnaye has on the city’s culinary scene.

Magnaye’s little eatery bagged Time Out Melbourne’s Restaurant of the Year Award in 2022 (just seven months after opening) and it isn’t hard to see why. Like much of the modern Asian dining scene there, the food is a riff on Filipino flavours that still alludes to the bounty of fresh produce in the Oceania region, while harnessing the power of wood-fire cooking.

The menu has all sorts of interesting items like the McScallop which features fat Abrolhos scallop with crab fat sauce and pandesal (a classic Filipino bread roll). Abrolhos scallops are harvested in the chain of islands that bear its name off western Australia.

There’s also wood-fired fare like the Port Lincoln calamari with smoked longganissa nduja (Filipino sweet sausage). Vegetarian items like the cabbage tocino – organic savoy cabbage and roasted garlic – offer rich smoky notes with the char and sweetness all intact within the vegetable.

Expect to indulge in the crossroads between Filipino aspirations and the bounty of Australian ingredients here.

Lune Croissanterie

Few media outlets carry as much heft and weight as The New York Times. So when the esteemed publication published a story back in 2016 arguing that Melbourne’s Lune Croissanterie was the birthplace of the world’s best croissants, well, you can probably imagine what happened next.

Nearly a decade later, the croissant institution is perpetually packed and serpentine queues are still an everyday occurrence.

If you’re up for a slightly different experience, indulge in a three-course set lunch at Lune Croissanterie’s Lune Lab in Melbourne’s Fitzroy district.

A three-course croissant lunch at Lune Lab features a series of seasonal croissant meals, like this delicious mushroom croissant, which blooms with woodland flavours. — ABIRAMI DURAI/The Star

Here, you’ll get a bird’s eye view of the inner workings of the world’s best croissanterie via its raw production kitchen called the “cube”. Much of the allure of this experience is being able to watch the bakers work the dough and staring at (and smelling) the burnished golden croissants emerging from the ovens.

The bakery was founded by former aerospace engineer Kate Reid and her brother, Cameron. The croissants are made to Kate’s exacting standards and fashioned out of butter sourced from the north of France.

The croissants typically take three days to complete, from making the dough and fermenting it overnight, then laminating and shaping it the next day and finally proofing and then baking in the oven.

At Lune Lab, eight seats overlook the glass-encased cube and cheerful staff bring out three courses of croissant meals that test the limits of what you think a croissant could be.

The mushroom croissant for instance is sensationally good – each flake and crumb a perfect configuration that yields to buttery richness inside.

Big Esso by Mabu Mabu

Across Australia, there has been a growing appreciation for native Australian produce and the original inhabitants of the Land Down Under. Consequently, in the last decade or so, native Australian restaurants (also called First Nation restaurants) have flourished, like Karkalla in Byron Bay and Sydney Harbour’s Midden by Mark Olive.

In Melbourne, Big Esso by Mabu Mabu has been a leading stalwart in terms of championing homegrown Australian ingredients. Helmed by seasoned Torres Straits chef Nornie Bero (a member of the Komet tribe), the restaurant’s main aim is to put native ingredients in kitchens across Australia.

The menu at the restaurant celebrates the diversity and abundance of what’s available on Australian land and includes bush meat like kangaroo, emu, wallaby, wild boar and crocodile as well as more unusual Indigenous ingredients like saltbush, bunya nuts, peppermint gum and warrigal greens.

Expect to tuck into kangaroo tartare with green ants and rice crisps or an emu steak with macadamia macha or even fried oysters with a desert lime XO sauce.

There is a focus on seasonality so depending on what time of the year you’re there, you could also sample Moreton bay bugs, bam bam squash and Kukuwam pickled pears.

Although Supernormal derives inspiration from the chef’s travels to east Asia, it is the eatery’s peanut butter parfait that is a huge hit. — Visit Victoria

Supernormal

The creative output of chef extraordinaire Andrew McConnell – who is also the man behind Melbourne’s famed brunch spot Cumulus Inc as well as Cutler & Co – Supernormal is an Asian-influenced eatery with a focus on Australian produce.

McConnell is highly influential in Melbourne, which is why Supernormal is perpetually bursting at the seams. The restaurant draws inspiration from some of the chef’s favourite eating experiences in east Asian cities like Seoul (South Korea), Shanghai (China), Hong Kong and Tokyo (Japan) and consequently is awash in ingredients like Szechuan pepper, which features predominantly on the menu.

Expect to indulge in an array of meals that celebrate and harness the richness of east Asian flavours while still paying homage to Australian produce. Highlights from the menu include marinated Fremantle octopus with nori and chilli, as well as the Gippsland striploin with roasted kimchi and spring onion.

Perhaps the most popular item on the menu is the distinctly un-Asian peanut butter parfait with salted caramel and soft chocolate. This dish is so popular that it even has its own fan base – reputedly the restaurant is inundated with letters and emails paying tribute to this sweet treat!

Gimlet is stylish with an old-world charm and the food to match. — VISIT VICTORIA

Gimlet

One of the hottest restaurants in Melbourne right now, Gimlet has been a roaring success since it first opened in 2020. Another one of prolific chef McConnell’s creative outputs, the restaurant even made it onto the World’s 50 Best Restaurants longlist in 2022, the only Australian restaurant to do so.

The eatery has a 1920s, flapper-style charm, harking back to the halcyon days of Hollywood’s Golden Age when eating out also meant dressing up. And yet, there is also a casual charm to the eatery, which boasts an impressive wine list and a line-up of fresh seafood. If you can, opt for the seasonal menu where you get to try some of the restaurant’s best fares, like the country sourdough with cultured butter.

The King George whiting with horseradish and caviar sauce is an ode to creamy sauces of yore and features fresh, tender fish blanketed by a sauce that is thick, with an alluring potency and pungency and the added opulence of caviar to tie it all together.

The restaurant’s wine pairing options are also fabulous, which includes gems like Ten Minutes by Tractor Estate Chardonnay 2022 from the Mornington Peninsula and the Serrat 2017 Pinot Noir from the Yarra Valley.

Aunty Peg’s

Melbourne’s coffee culture has attained cult status over the years and a variety of roasteries and coffee shops punctuate every street corner of the city centre, like St Ali, Seven Seeds and Code Black. But few are as well known as Proud Mary Coffee, which has become a Melbourne institution.

At Aunty Peg’s, which is named after Proud Mary director Nolan Hirte’s grandmother, you can see what is at the heart of the brand’s success.

The roastery – the only Proud Mary roastery in Australia – sends out about 1.5 tonnes of coffee every week and also has cupping (tasting sessions) where you can do one-on-one personalised tastings, including sampling rare beans from Honduras and Panama.

There are also opportunities to tour the working roastery and learn to brew your own cuppa with the seasoned baristas, who function as walking, talking coffee dictionaries.

Reine & La Rue

The hottest F&B establishment in the city is none other than the feted Reine & La Rue. The glitzy, glamorous venue was once home to Melbourne’s Stock Exchange and has retained much of that old-world splendour and charm.

It’s the sort of venue whose looks form instant first impressions – in a very good way, with highlights including some of the oldest stained glass windows in Victoria, a Gothic design and high ceilings, all retained from the original building which was completed in the late 1800s. In the kitchen, a wood-fired grill takes centre stage.

The eatery is built around the concept of modern French cuisine, with seafood forming an integral part of the menu. Part of the star offerings include the likes of Tasmanian oysters with smoked olive oil and seaweed mignonette which really highlight the natural plumpness, briny underpinnings and succulence of the oysters.

Other aquatic offerings include the grilled Skull Island tiger prawns with fennel and Café de Paris butter and bluefin tuna with black olive.

Overall, you’ll feel seen and want to be seen at this trendy restaurant, which melds good (but expensive) food in a delicious new space that still retains its halcyon charm.