Hottest food and drink trends in Victoria for 2019
From wild meats to oozy cheese, mini martinis and perfectly posh sausage rolls, these are the tastiest trends defining Victorian dining in 2019. Here’s where you can get your hands on them.
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On October 13, the fourth annual delicious. 100 will be released — Victoria’s only ranked guide to the 100 most delicious restaurants in the state.
To compile this list, we travelled thousands of kilometres across Victoria eating hundreds of dishes and have whittled down the worthy and good to bring you the best.
During this process, we’ve eaten a boatload of sardines and a paddock’s worth of Jerusalem artichokes. We’ve seen off piles of pasta and sipped natural wines and local gins and celebrated the return of the owner-operated venue that’s putting the host back into hospitality. Here are some of the tastiest trends we’ve seen that are defining Victorian dining in 2019.
GOOD GAME
Good for us and the planet, kangaroo bounded onto every menu a couple of years back and chefs since haven’t stopped revelling in using roo.
But it’s no longer simply Skippy ending up on the plate.
We’re increasingly seeing wallaby being used in creative, delicious dishes — see salt-cured wallaby tartare wrapped in cured egg yolk at Navi — and goat being subbed in for lamb in braise-style dishes. The goat with nettle pappardelle at Osteria Ilaria is the pin-up for just how good goat can be.
Chefs are increasingly game with using ever-wilder meats.
Julian Hills at Navi sources Tassie possum, wrapping it in brik pastry and topping it with a native berry chutney for a dish that advances Australian fare for the better.
Uni — or sea urchin roe — jumped out of the Japanese kitchen and onto the Modern Melbourne menu, used as a lux snack or creamy seasoning or simply savoured on its own.
As far as putting a pests on the plate, it’s win-win for diners and the kelp forests of our waters alike.
Meanwhile, Matt Stone and Jo Barrett at Yarra Valley’s Oakridge turn crocodile into a retro-licious dish that harks to the prawn toasts of the suburban Aussie Chinese, but with desert lime and a funky XO sauce, updates it for today.
SMALL BITES
In the shadows of the large hospitality groups that have dominated the industry — and headlines — of the past years where size and scale was all that mattered has emerged a small, but growing restaurant force.
Bigger and bolder has been replaced by smaller is better, with tiny owner-operated venues carving out a niche and doing more with less.
At the end of the train line Zoe Birch and partner Lachlan serve a daily changing menu four nights a week in their 15-seater, Greasy Zoe’s in the heart of Hurstbridge.
In Ballarat, Derek Boath serves a multi-course feast on Friday and Saturday nights to just 20 people, while Balaclava newcomer Pretty Little is just that — a restaurant of a single table that seats 16.
Eschewing inner-city rents and keeping labour costs low by doing most of the work themselves, this new breed of chef/restaurateur is swapping the traditional more-is-more mantra of the professional kitchen for a more modern (young) family first approach to work-life balance.
Steve Rogers from Kyneton’s Midnight Starling opens four nights but gave up hit-and-miss Sunday lunches in the popular tourist town.
“We just found the time was better spent with our families,” he says.
TEMPERANCE SOCIETY
Mindfulness has moved on from the yoga mat and into our bars, with “conscious consumption” of booze a growing trend — especially among millennial drinkers.
“It’s more about having a taste and then moving onto something with dinner. If you start with a negroni and then go onto wine that’s a lot of drinking especially midweek,” says Tom Hunter, who introduced the $6 three-sip martini at South Yarra’s Omnia.
Snack-sized cocktails allow the bar to shine at night and the drinker to in the morning, and while restraint isn’t a word usually applied to a bar open until 5am, half-sized Manhattans have been the runaway hit at the CBD’s subterranean Bar Margaux.
Newcomer Fred in Cremorne adds Mad Men-style to knock-off drinks but poured small for the digital natives who work in the area.
The booze-free match across the multi-course degustation is increasingly as exciting — and often more creative — than an endless parade of wines, while one-on, one-off 50-50 matches offered at places such as O.My delight drinker and driver alike.
VEG OUT
While veganism is the hottest food movement of the moment, its less prescriptive cousin vegetarianism shines brighter and “flexitarianism” shines brightest.
Meat is increasingly being used sparingly, often simply to season a dish — such as carrots poached in chicken stock served with roasted chicken skin crumb at O.My — and kitchen gardens are becoming evermore productive.
More than 90 per cent of the fresh produce needed for Daylesford’s Lake House kitchen comes from its new Dairy Flat Farm down the road, while even the wheat for Dan Hunter’s world-famous bread at Brae is now grown and ground on site.
Chefs are getting creative in the kitchen and having fun putting veg to the fore in a patch-to-plate procession. Ugly veg are looking good — knobbly Jerusalem artichokes were everywhere this winter, whether used as a crunchy casing for southern rock lobster as it is at Brae or served in sublime velouté from by Steve Nairn at Omnia.
EURO VISION
Pizza and pasta, calamari and cotoletta have been immutable fixtures of Melbourne’s dining landscape for decades, and restaurants such as Rosa’s Canteen and Grossi Grill are as popular as ever.
But a new wave of venues and next-gen operators are shaking things up — with many blurring the lines between restaurant and bar, just as they do in Rome and beyond.
Whether it’s knock-your-socks-off art-glam power lunching at Di Stasio Citta through the more humble charms of North Carlton’s Giro D’Italia, the American-style slices that pack a punch at Leonardo’s Pizza Palace or the trippa alla romana and tiramisu at vegan powerhouse Smith & Daughters, 2019 has seen Italian dominate Melbourne dining like it’s 1960 again.
But it’s not just red-white-and-green that’s now being seen, with French connections still strong.
The Reymond siblings have added Frederick to their Gitan stable of French leaning eateries, South Yarra’s Omnia pop-up is about to move down Toorak Rd into its more permanent Capitol Grand digs and duck frites are du jour long after dark at Bar Margaux.
But conversely Vue de monde, under the new stewardship of young gun chef Hugh Allen, has shaken free of its French roots (bar the souffle) to become a truly Australian experience — even the famous cheese trolley is now filled with an all Oz selection.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Retro dishes have always had a place in our heart but our top-end chefs are arguably having the most fun nodding to nostalgia while creating knockout tastes for today.
Whether it’s the Vegemite scroll to start a meal at Attica, the Anzac ice cream sandwich at Brae or the iced vovos and wattle seed “tim tams” served in a biscuit tin at Vue de monde, going back to the future has never tasted quite so good.
SPREAD EM
“House baked bread” is often a disappointingly half-baked offering, with many kitchens better off leaving it to Baker Bleu. But when they get it right, all of a sudden paying $4 a serve is quite all right, especially when it’s teamed with something other than butter.
The wood-fired potato flatbread at Lesa is good as is, but swiped through the yin-yang pond of macadamia cream and shiitake oil? Stuff of dreams.
Ditto the cheesy-buttery-peppery “cacio e pepe” served alongside a warm slab of sourdough at East Brunswick’s Etta, while dukkah-sprinkled hummus and crudités excitingly accompany the dark wattle seed loaf served at Tarrawarra.
And then there’s the beef fat butter made from a namechecked cow (literally, Norman the Hereford) at O.My that happily harks to a time when dripping meant winning at dinner.
SAY CHEESE
Our Italian love affair extends to the fridge with burrata (a cream-filled mozzarella) and stracciatella (a looser, creamier version) the cheeses of choice for the modern Melbourne menu, whether hip wine bar (Bar Liberty, Carlton Wine Room) or stylish inner-city stayer (Rockpool, French Saloon).
OTHER OBSERVATIONS
• Are sausage rolls the new pie? Whether it’s the haggis number at Chewton’s Red Hill Hotel, Neil Perry’s perfectly posh version at the new R Bar or Sean Donovan’s game changers at Prahran’s Mt Erica, sausage rolls are on a roll.
• Sardines have gone from unloved catfood to the adored rockstar of the sea world. Leading the charge is Paynesville’s eponymous eatery on the water, but sardines are seen everywhere from Tulum in Balaclava to Anglesea’s Captain Moonlite. Octopus comes a close second.
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• Tartare is still on every menu, whether it’s made from exotic meat — wallaby, alpaca — or in exotic fashion, a la tableside at Cutler & Co.
• While many still scatter saltbush and dispatch desert lime on dishes with tasteless abandon, chefs are (slowly) realising less is so much more when it comes to native ingredients.
• Flowers have been taken off the plate and put back in the vase. Finally.