Is Little Malop Street the best eat street in regional Victoria? If diversity and vibrancy are any measure, the precinct is giving it a red-hot go. Let’s take a look at our options. Will it be tacos and beer, ramen with a sake chaser or dumplings riding shotgun with a Martini? A fried chicken pitstop is always a good idea (go on, have another beer), or you might prefer to linger over a steak tartare with a glass of a rosé made in the neighbouring Moorabool Valley.
That’s not the half of the offering, either. And like any great eat street, Little Malop has lots going on, and it’s all happening in an easy, fun and walkable neighbourhood. Better still, perhaps, the kind of venues in the mix here means you don’t have to go all on one spot – it’s the sort of place where you can snack and drink your way around a choice of 30 different watering holes and eateries. It’s a good recipe for a great night out.
You want local lobster in a lobster roll with garlic shiso butter? Sumi has got you. Ricotta dumplings with peppers, hazelnut and parmesan? The Arborist is the answer. Mini Martinis and bumps of oscietra caviar? Non Disclosure Bar is all over it.
“It’s the concentration of hospitality businesses that really makes the area so unique,” says Brian Anderson from dumpling specialists Bahjong. “Melbourne doesn’t have its equivalent – in fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find another place like this in Australia. It’s super casual, so you can just drift from place to place as the mood takes you.”
Little Malop isn’t Geelong’s only food and drink precinct, of course. Nearby Pakington Street and the waterfront, are also dining destinations. But just a few blocks back from Corio Bay, the strip packs so much big city buzz you could be forgiven for thinking Geelong has declared itself Victoria’s new capital.
And while the time commitment for diners might be low, the quality on offer is high. At Bahjong, for instance, everything is made from scratch, from the dough for the dumpling skins. They break down whole pigs for the pork and cabbage dumplings. The house signature Korean dumplings are filled with spicy gochujang and chicken skin and finished with a coating of fried cornflakes (“sounds a bit weird but it really works,” says Anderson) while the meringue and yuzu curd dumplings are like pavlovas on a Japanese holiday.
The civic foresight to turn the narrow street dominated by historic shopfronts into a pedestrian precinct has added to the holiday vibe. Kerbside tables fill up when it’s warm (and even when it isn’t), evoking the late-night drinking and dining culture of Spain. The fun snakes down adjacent laneways to venues like modern French restaurant Felix, where you can indulge in full caviar service or just smash some leek and Gruyère croquettes.
“Geelong was a bit of a locals’-own kind of place for a long time, until visitors from Melbourne started cottoning on,” says Charles Roy, who co-owns the chic bistro with Matt Baird and Jesse Hughes. “With Felix we thought the area was ready for something a little more sophisticated, where you can sit down to a full meal if you like, or just stick to the grazing.”
So where to head on a Little Malop crawl? There’s too much here to cover everything in a single visit, but a cocktail at moody speakeasy 18th Amendment Bar is an excellent option to open with. From there, indulge your love of chilli with the spicy noodles at Sober Ramen (they’ll dial it down if you want) or dive into a serve of loukoumades topped with honey and walnuts at LoukouMadness.
And any self-respecting night should begin, end or middle at Geelong Cellar Door. It’s one of the street’s older guards and opened in 2016 when Jon Helmer decided to parlay his years of regional wine retail experience into a wine bar celebrating the region.
“People were more familiar with the Mornington Peninsula or the Yarra Valley, so I decided to be the guy that champions Geelong wines across our three separate sub-regions,” he says. “The beauty is that they’re all family-owned – there are no big companies down here.”
Helmer isn’t into wine lists. Customers pick directly from the wine wall stocking local heavy hitters such as Bannockburn, Scotchmans Hill and Lethbridge Wines and interesting outliers such as Terra Nera, the Italian red variety Montepulciano which is grown in a single vineyard at Portarlington on the Bellarine Peninsula.
“You can grab a cheese or charcuterie platter as well but there’s no pressure,” says Helmer. “People often go off and have dinner elsewhere and come back for another glass of wine. The operators on Little Malop see it as one big venue in a way. We’ve been known to refer to it as Sesame Street because everyone knows everyone else and it’s so friendly.”
By Larissa Dubecki
This feature is presented in partnership with Visit Geelong & The Bellarine; explore the region in more delicious detail at visitgeelongbellarine.com.au
