Japanese ice covered with parmesan. Athenian chickpeas that beggar belief. Exceptional companion bars for some of the city’s finest dining landmarks. A quick tally of Melbourne’s recent openings tells us 2024 was a transformative year in hospitality. If you haven’t been in the city since last festival, or if you just feel like you’d find a recap useful, here’s some of the key highlights in new dining and drinking from the last 12 months.
Restaurants
Arnold’s
“A place for tasty food and fun wine.” Translation: a Kensington neighborhood spot with Latin American-accented hooks strong enough to have appeal that goes far beyond the local, whether it’s school prawns with jalapeno hot sauce or masa gnocchi with aji amarillo.
192 Bellair St, Kensington.
Askal
Blessed be the steady rise of Filipino fine dining in Melbourne. Askal was not the first, but it may be the fanciest (see: abalone and pork jowl sisig), and the cocktails are worth the visit alone.
167 Exhibition St, Melbourne
Bar Spontana
Remarkable beers by the Mr West team, exceptional regional Thai drinking food by chef Pipat “Noom” Yodmunee. What else do you want? A cute-as-all-get-out location at the dead end of a Brunswick backstreet? You got it. And you can have friendly service and great cocktails, too.
4 Saxon St, Brunswick
Bistra
You like fancy burgers and very cold Martinis. You like quiet luxury in your fit outs and natural light bathing you from the north. You like restrained plating and thoughtful, timeless menus. Bistra wants to take you there. The bistro is back, and it’s like she never left.
157 Elgin St, Carlton
El Columpio
“Now that’s a taco!” exclaimed Melbourne shortly after Ricardo Garcia Flores (ex-Paco’s Tacos, MoVida Aqui) opened El Columpio on Johnston Street last year. Fans of pozole, the hominy-rich soup, cried something similar. Excellent barbacoa, a stellar breakfast offering of chilaquiles and tamales, and – por fin – a liquor license. Anecdotally one of the city’s proudest additions in the last 12 months.
Level 1/52 Johnston St, Fitzroy
Etta
In 2024, Brunswick East restaurant Etta farewelled chef Rosheen Kaul, throwing the pans to chef Lorcan Kan. Expect all the dare and contemporary Asian-Australian adventure you’ve come to love, but with a fresh perspective – one that gave life to one of the city’s most talked-about desserts in the chilli-oil parfait. 60 Lygon St, Brunswick East
Hacienda
When you think top-flight Mexican food, you think … Southbank? Well, now you do, thanks to the arrival of Hacienda, a new-school Mexican restaurant with Ross McCombe, a chef with time at leading Mexico restaurants Quintonil and La Docena to his name.
M28/3 Southgate Ave, Southbank
Hope St Radio
Not new, but Collingwood’s hot-person honey trap onboarded an excellent new chef in 2024 after farewelling a day-one in Ellie Bouhadana. Last sighted at Perth’s celebrated Wines of While, Blake Ellis and his penchant for ravioles au Dauphiné and peaches and cream profiteroles are a big get and a natural fit for the Yards.
Collingwood Yards, 35 Johnston St, Collingwood
Kolkata Cricket Club
Mischa Tropp, the man who brought Keralan drinking food to Fitzroy, now brings Bengali brilliance to Crown. Cricket on the telly, crisp Kingfishers in the fridge, and Indian food the likes of which you may never have tasted hitting the pass alongside Melbourne’s favourite butter chicken – howzat?
Opposite Village Cinemas, level 1 Casino, Crown Melbourne, 8 Whiteman St, Southbank
Liyin Rice Roll Master
Cheong fun, that rice-roll superstar of the dim sum trolley, was given its own show in 2024: an entire restaurant dedicated to its silken splendour. It’s the Master’s first Melbourne outpost and the cheong fun are essential eating, but please please please don’t snooze on the fermented bean curd fried chicken.
Healey’s Ln, Shop C2/550 Lonsdale St, Melbourne
Lucia
South Melbourne had a little glow-up in 2024, and the schmick Italian stylings of Lucia had a lot to do with that. It bills itself as a neighbourhood spot but watch as your waiter trickles coffee syrup through the channels of your scorched meringue and tell us there’s not something a little more polished at play here.
11 Eastern Rd, South Melbourne
Maison Bâtard
Big, bold, unabashedly exxy examination of contemporary French food conducted over four jaw-dropping storeys. Joie de vivre on the axis of excess. Don’t miss drinks on the roof terrace.
23 Bourke St, Melbourne
Marmelo
Portuguese and Spanish food traditions have seldom looked as slick in an Australian restaurant as in a meal bookended by crab Portuguese tarts and lard-caramel pudim.
130 Russell St, Melbourne
Mid Air
Melbourne has many riches in the cafe/casual space, but few of them happen to be 12 floors above street level. Apart from singular and winning views the appeal of, Mid Air, the heart of Melbourne Place’s food-and-drink offering, also includes a breakfast roll laden with fried egg, bacon, a hashbrown, cheddar and tomato jam, and, later in the day, skewers of king prawns with Aleppo pepper and taramasalata.
Melbourne Place, 130 Russell St, Melbourne
Molli and Little Molli
Step into Molli for contemporary, mostly European bistro fare – rock oysters with pickled lemonade fruit; hispi cabbage, beurre blanc and almond; gem lettuce and anchovy cream – or nip next door to sister cafe Little Molli for coffee and great sandwiches.
20 Mollison St, Abbotsford
Muli Express
You didn’t know how badly you needed a standing-room-only, shucked-to-order oyster bar, and now you can’t remember life without one. An inspired opening from the people behind Footscray’s D&K Live Seafood, Muli Express sells a crazy-big range of live oysters – no minimum order, no questions asked. Crazier still, they just opened a wine bar two doors up on Little Bourke Street, where you can sit, eat oysters, drink wine, and contemplate ordering sea urchin ice-cream. It’s called Stop Whining. You heard me – Stop Whining.
163 Little Bourke St, Melbourne
North Fitzroy Arms
Beef cheek and ale pie in pea soup, olives with candied lemon, and a retired dairy cow cheeseburger: chef Barney Cohen’s menu plus a banger of a drinks list vaulted the NFA into the company of the city’s best pub reboots.
296 Rae St, Fitzroy North
Orlo
One of the most beautiful rooms – or collections of rooms, rather – to open in Melbourne in the last year also happens to be home to plenty of food you’re going to want to eat. Chef Matteo Tine weaves his Sicilian heritage together with influences from the wider world in plates such as Tropea onion tarte Tatin with smoked lardo and Barese sausage with friarelli peppers and salsa verde.
44 Oxford St, Collingwood
Papelón
Hallacas: corn meal, stuffed with meat, wrapped in plantain leaves and boiled till delicious. They’re one of Venezuela’s tastiest snacks. Now, thanks to Reveka Hurtado, they’re one of Footscray’s tastiest snacks – and the drawcard at her thriving Venezuelan restaurant Papelón.
Unit 190/81 Hopkins St, Footscray
R Harn
Soi 38 closing its carpark digs and reopening elsewhere was one of the bigger stories in Thai food last year. Soi 38 opening a whole new restaurant dedicated to the food of southern Thailand mightn’t have caught as much attention, but R Harn is equally exciting nonetheless for fans of southern hits such as khao yum and khanom jeen.
264 La Trobe St, Melbourne
Reed House
True, there is so much more to this excellent new bistro’s menu than the Welsh rarebit crumpet. But you really do have to have it.
130 Lonsdale St, Melbourne
Shusai Mijo
Melbourne’s best kappo restaurant is… right over the road from Aldi in Fitzroy? Busy Johnston Street might seem an incongruous place to savour an omakase offered in hushed, almost reverent surrounds, but at Mijo that’s all part of the charm. Pull up a seat at the counter and put yourself in chef Jun Oya’s hands as he passes you morsel after perfect morsel. What the heck is the “not-wasabi sauce” with the sea-eel nigiri sushi? Step in and find out.
256 Johnston St, Fitzroy
Suupaa
Udon Bolognese! Egg sandos! Koppepan! Chukapan! Onigiri! Your brand-new one-stop shop for fresh takes on konbini classics in a beautifully designed space.
Shop 1, 65 Dover Street, Cremorne
Tombo Den
Sushi. A vibe. Decent value. What if we told you that you could have all three of these things in one place? That place, friends, is on Chapel Street and it is called Tombo Den.
100a Chapel St, Windsor
Tzaki
Posterchild of Melbourne’s Greek renaissance and a love letter to the neighbourhood eateries of Athens. Doing things with chickpeas previously thought impossible in a wood-fired tasting-bar situation that is irresistible.
31 Ballarat St, Yarraville
Cafés
Cafe Tomi
You want jazz on vinyl, some fine sweets and some of the very best coffee Melbourne has to offer, and Tomi wants to give it to you.
11 Wreckyn St, North Melbourne
City Saints
Is Collingwood at peak coffee saturation? Apparently not. And the arrival of this newcomer, tucked away in the heritage-listed Yorkshire Brewery tower, just off Wellington Street, keeps the quality high, with cameos of beans from cult roasters everywhere from The Hague to Busan.
Unit 1 A/2 Mansard Ln, Collingwood
Masses Bagels
The cult bagel of Carlton Farmers’ Market found a permanent home on Smith Street early in 2024. Show-grade tomatoes, hot-smoked trout and luxurious quark feature heavily and deliciously on these, the city’s best bagels, while fermented peach shrubs with Thai basil and seriously good coffee tie a bow on a pitch-perfect offering. I don’t know what “wave” we’re up to in coffee/café land – four? Five? – but either way, this is some cutting-edge morning fare, boiled fresh daily.
5 Smith St, Fitzroy
Moon Mart
Having won a fast following in West Melbourne, Eun Hee An and Mei Onsalmee have moved to more salubrious digs on Clarendon Street. Nicer new space, same incredible contemporary Korean café food, plus a few new rippers. If you like your hoedeobap with a side of okonomiyaki hashbrowns, you need Moon Mart in your life.
315 Clarendon St, South Melbourne
Ophelia
From the folks that brought you Terror Twilight comes this Westgarth instant hit. The menu might sound a bit busy for breakfast (sample item: “creme fraiche, dill, caperberries, shuyo white cucumber, pickled cucumber, iceplant, served on sourdough toast”) but rest assured it all comes together on the plate.
85 High St, Northcote
Sebastian Kakigori
Things we did not see coming in 2024: luxury ice imported direct from Japan, shaved and flavoured in the service of sweetness. It was part of a wider boom in shaved-ice desserts, with Korean bingsu, Pinoy halo-halo and Japanese kakigori each winning Melburnian hearts over the last year. No store, however, pushed the concept quite as far as Sebastian Kakigori, who blew sweet tooths away with combinations like pear, blackcurrant and fluffy parmesan. Kakigorically excellent.
203 Queen St Melbourne
Bars
Bar Olo
Conceived as a sister bar for neighbourhood stalwart Scopri, Bar Olo won a fast audience and some of food media’s biggest awards right off the bat when it opened in 2024. Rich with excellent cocktails, a fabulous wine list and a menu of Italian snacks and pasta that reads like an A-grade osteria, Bar Olo’s appeal is as much about its quality of offering as its adaptability: it can be cosy, it can be raunchy, and it’s very good in both gears.
165 Nicholson St, Carlton
Carnation Canteen
Okay, so Tiny Bar might’ve given it some competition on the very-small-venue front, but that doesn’t lessen the appeal of this gorgeous (and, yes, compact) corner spot on a Fitzroy back street. Owner and chef Audrey Shaw worked at River Cafe in London and Tedesca on the peninsula, and it shows in the passionate concision of her handwritten, mostly Mediterranean-leaning menus.
165 Gore St, Fitzroy
Goodwater
The word “Ohio” translates to “good water” in some Native American languages, and we’re told the Ohio River snakes through the best whiskey country in the US. Stop in at this Northcote newcomer for sippin’ whiskey, fine cocktails and American-accented snacks.
300 High St, Northcote
Inuman
John Rivera has flown the flag for Filipino food with great success at Kariton Sorbetes and Askal restaurant; now at Inuman, on the roof of Askal, he and drinks genius Ralph Libo-On, are doing it in bar form. The bevs are outstanding, and the food might be better still: kick off with a wet Martini flavoured with bay leaf oil and carve your way through little sandwiches laden with crisp chicken skin and what must be Melbourne’s best bar nuts.
Level 3, 167 Exhibition St, Melbourne
Le Splendide
France-Soir opened a bar you guys! A wood-panelled, softly lit wonderland of wine and cocktails cut from a slightly silkier cloth than its companion, but fizzing, nonetheless, with the same jolly hedonism.
9 Toorak Rd, South Yarra
Misfits
Footscray’s bar boom continued in 2024 with the arrival of Misfits – a rewazz of what was once Baby Snakes by the teams behind Whitehart and Section 8. It’s a place to shake ass to contemporary Brazilian club music as much as it is a place to drink cocktails, and its smoking area might be the liveliest in all the west.
30 Chambers St, Footscray
Mr Mills
Like its parent restaurant, Marmelo, this crisply decorated basement bar takes Portugal and Spain as its inspiration, but a sangria-and-patatas-brava party this is not. Instead, it’s all about wines of unexpected provenance, cocktails of unusual quality, and bar snacks of a higher order. The house take on the bikini, Spain’s classic ham-and-cheese, made here with jamon paleta and sheep’s cheese, is the toastie taken to new heights of elegance.
Basement, 30 Russell St, Melbourne
Regional Victoria
The Daylesford Hotel
Polish up the room but don’t take away the charm. Add a total banger of a drinks list. Then get Rob Kabboord, the former 2IC from Sydney fine-diner Quay to write the menu and cook the food. Now that, friends, is how you reboot a pub.
2 Burke Sq, Daylesford
By Frank Sweet and Pat Nourse