These are our top picks for the best entrees, desserts and everything delicious in between.

STUDENTS REVIEW DINNER BY HESTON BLUMENTHAL

DELICIOUS.100: DINNER BY HESTON CROWNED OUR BEST

VICTORIA CRACKS WORLD’S 50 BEST RESTAURANTS LIST

Eggplant and lamb

at Brae

Lamb and eggplant. So classic, so simple. But in Dan Hunter’s hands nothing is quite as it seems. The saltgrass lamb (pictured above) comes as a thin slice — velvety soft, textural and ethereal — and covers eggplant that’s firm yet supple and slightly bittersweet. A variety of herbs, including mint and tarragon, are teamed with acid leaves, including bone succulent and coastal ice plant. With every single bite adding a different flavour and dimension to the dish, this is an incredible, dexterous, mind-blowing powerhouse of wow.

4285 Cape Otway Rd, Birregurra

Magpie goose, muntari berries

at Vue de Monde

Served just after Spanish mackerel with sea herbs and just before the best chocolate souffle, this sumptuous dish is a reminder of just how adventurous — and downright exciting — dining at Vue de Monde can be. Magpie goose, a staple of indigenous people in northern parts of Australia, rarely makes it on to restaurant tables. Vue uses a farmed variety, roasting its breast meat to piquant perfection, then allying it to red cabbage and native (muntari) cranberries. The dish glows like a Renaissance painting, its gamey taste sparked with feral flavours.

525 Collins St, city

Squid, fennel and peas

at Embla

At the best little wine bar in town comes this sexy salad of local squid and fennel, both grilled over the fire and sliced, bedded down with peas, shallot, pea leaves and lemon. The dressing is a pil pil from squid tentacles and olive oil, mixed with fermented pea shell juice for a dish that’s funky, fresh and screams summer.

122 Russell St, city

Imperfect history of tarts

at Attica

The storytelling, always a feature of Ben Shewry’s oeuvre at Attica, is in page-turning form in a series of tarts charting the history of the area. There’s native lime and plum, black pudding with Earl Grey, and matzo chicken. Each is a one-bite wonder that gives a moment to ponder the changing nature of this pocket of Melbourne. It’s one example of the wit and whimsy that defines a meal at this rightfully world-famous restaurant.

74 Glen Eira Rd, Ripponlea

Venison & bottled cherries

at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal

The “Meat Fruit” always steals the show at Dinner By Heston, guests curious to experience its culinary sleight of hand. But to overlook “Venison & Bottled Cherries” at Blumenthal’s Crown digs is to miss one of his — and Melbourne’s — best dishes. Chef Ashley Palmer-Watts roasts the venison to blushing, pinot-pink perfection, slicing it thickly and napping it with earthily attractive smoked beetroot and grilled red cabbage. Pickled cherries are, well, the cherries on top.

Crown Complex, Southbank

Crispy organic egg

at Ezard at Levantine Hill

A grandly ambitious venture for the Yarra Valley, Ezard at Levantine is best approached by helicopter ... but it’s not essential. What you must do is match winemaker Paul Bridgeman’s wines to Teage Ezard’s elegant food. There is no better match than this crispy organic egg with a glass of 2015 Levantine Hill Estate chardonnay. Frizzed up to the max with flaky pastry and bedded down with creamed leek and red sorrel, it’s a standout dish on the vegetarian tasting menu.

882 Maroondah Hwy, Coldstream

Meredith cheesecake

at Amaru

Clinton McIver’s Armadale fine diner continues its ambitious, delicious, exploration of the bounty of Australia and along with the Davidson plums and Portarlington mussels and Otway shiitakes — perhaps even a dim sim, too — it’s the nod to the brilliant goat’s cheese from Meredith Dairy that provides the prettiest full stop. Pressed and sprayed to resemble a golden ingot, the creamy-sharp cheese comes with mandarin ice cream with bite, a touch of lemon myrtle marmalade and honeycomb for crunch. Amaru has struck gold.

1121 High St, Armadale

Spanner crab

at Doot Doot Doot

In the dining room at the new peninsula destination that’s redefining luxe, chef Guy Stanaway is serving up an ever-changing five-course menu that’s at once approachable yet completely unique. Take, for instance, the velvety cuddle of mash that’s as rich as a fur that Stanaway then teams with delicate, sweet, spanner crab. At once decadent and defined, it comes with a double hit of passport-stamping umami — Japanese furikake and Italian bottarga — for a jetsetting plate that’s simply first class.

166 Balnarring Rd, Merricks North

Octopus with njuda

at Osteria Ilaria

Osteria Ilaria, the next-door sibling to Melbourne’s world-class Tipo 00 pasta bar, is serving up a healthy dose of Italian tradition born anew. And that looks like the unmissable whole baby octopus, grilled and splayed prostrate across a spicy moat of ndjuda, a spicy spreadable Calabrian sausage. It’s an inspired match, the sea and heat working in perfect harmony. Add a glass of vermentino and you have a one-two sucker-punch of yes.

367 Lt Bourke St, city

Apple tart

at Matteo’s

It’s the inspired take on a tart that will have you doing a double take. Macadamia shards and praline crumble blanket stewed cubes of apple, the lot sitting on a razor-thin pastry case. On top, a flawlessly recreated apple comes filled with tonka bean ice cream. It’s every bit an apple tart, but like no other apple tart you’ve tasted before. It’s the kind of forward-looking fun that cements Matteo’s as one of our great restaurants.

533 Brunswick St, Fitzroy North

Arroz caldoso

at MoVida

While the octopus’s tentacles have attached themselves to every second modern Melbourne menu, it sometimes pays to go back to the masters to see how it should be done. Enter Frank Camorra with the arresting arroz caldoso — or “wet soupy rice” — a lesson in tradition elevated by produce and a modern eye. Vibrantly coloured with plankton that gives an elegant sea/salt vibe to the rice, excellent clams and generous chunks of charred tentacles add heft to the ocean, which a few sea succulents complement with salty crunch. This gets an A plus.

Hosier Lane, City

Gin orange

at Oakridge

At the Yarra Valley’s Oakridge winery Matt Stone and Jo Barratt are going from strength to strength, teaming what’s plucked from their vegie patch with the best of the region. And Jo’s desserts are in a class of their own, with a “gin orange” full stop as cool and clever as they come. Taking leftover oranges that Four Pillars down the road use for their gin, Jo turns them into a bright orange parfait. A granita on top is a pure punch of mandarin, with lemon curd providing sharp bite, macadamia delivering crunch. A celebration of citrus that’s a real party.

864 Maroondah Hwy, Coldstream

Calamari noodles

at Ramblr

It’s one of the best dishes of 2017: calamari “noodles”. Tiny, tender Shirley Temple curls of cephalopod are served atop a thin slice of kimchi cabbage with fleet-footed heat, the unseen addition of smoked marrow adding decadent depth. It’s at once innovative, arresting, cool and creative and totally delicious.

363 Chapel St, South Yarra

Dry aged gaian duck

at Lake House

“There a rhythm to the life of our house on the lake,’’ says Alla Wolf-Tasker. At Lake House, in Daylesford, that rhythm is all to do with specialist produce coming into the kitchen from select provedores. Wolf-Tasker, as “culinary director’’, orchestrates these ingredients in ways that express the essence of every season. And in winter, this dish — impeccably cooked duck nesting with local beetroot, rhubarb and preserved elderberries — was a revelation. A meaty richness underlaid with jags of bitterness and tints of fruit.

4 King St, Daylesford

Three Rivers lamb, milk buns

at Anchovy

Anchovy is home to “Asian Australian cooking’’ but that bald descriptor merely hits at the joys awaiting you if you order chef Thi Le’s Vietnamese blood pudding with ginger or pork jowl with rice puree. Best of all is Anchovy’s Three Rivers lamb neck with doughy milk buns. Le’s handling of his butter-soft cut is nothing short of miraculous, blistered and dark on the outside and gelatinous within. Daikon pickles and spinach seal the deal.

337 Bridge Rd, Richmond

Hapuka, clams, mussels

at Kazuki’s

Thank goodness Kazuki Tsuya decided to swap Akita in northern Japan for Daylesford. Otherwise we might never have encountered his Moreton Bay bug in sake butter and ponzu or his lamb with eggplant and miso. Find them at Kazuki’s Victorian era dining room with mod Japanese flourishes. And make sure your tasting menu, with wine or sake, includes hapuka, clams and mussels. Kazuki melds these treasures of the deep with great care, coaxing flavours from them that literally dance on the tongue.

1 Camp St, Daylesford

Caramelised confit apple

at Philippe

You know his rotisseried chicken is a benchmark bird, that his charcoal grilled pork rack is adorned with the best Parisienne mash this side of Paris. But Philippe Mouchel — our most respected French chef — has a winning way with dessert as well. Order the caramelised confit apple at his basement diner, Philippe, and you are rewarded with a glistening stack of sticky fruit rising ever so gently above nodules of green apple sorbet. This sweet is a thing of beauty.

115 Collins St, city

Buttermilk, red cabbage

at IGNI

A standout of this Geelong star’s edgy yet familiar dego dishes. The buttermilk’s so thick it’s like custard, the chunks of golden kiwi add the pop of the tropics. And as for the red cabbage, it’s been juiced, reduced with sherry vinegar and frozen into a granita that’s sprinkled over the lot. Textural and pretty, this pings on the palate as much as the eyeballs.

Ryan Pl, Geelong

Scallops with pork belly

at Lamaro’s

Surf and turf has never been such a riot of flavour. Lamaro’s best-selling entree unites just-cooked grilled scallops and roasted pork belly in a Thai-inspired sweet, sour and salty sauce of tamarind, palm sugar and fish sauce, all topped with chilli, spearmint leaves and raw and crispy-fried shallots. Geoff Lindsay debuted this dish at Pearl back in 2006, and it’s just as enticing at his new pub digs today.

273-279 Cecil St, South Melbourne

Kingfish sashimi

at Lucy Liu

Everyone wants to get their hands on kingfish. There’s hardly a restaurant in town that doesn’t want to cure, marinate and mess around with it. But Lucy Liu, the hip Asia-centric city diner, does a kingfish sashimi like no other. Where do chefs Michael Lambie and Zac Cribbes source their produce from? How do they get the cool-hot chilli-mint balance so right? And who thought of adding a fine sprinkle of toasted coconut for toothsome crunch?

Oliver Lane, city

— Don’t miss your Sunday Herald Sun on December 3 for the 2017 delicious. 100, brought to you by UberEATS, where we rank Victoria’s 100 most delicious restaurants.