The 10 restaurants that changed Melbourne dining forever
They transformed our city’s dining landscape forever. From the home of our wine bar culture to the place that made queuing a rite of passage, these are the 10 restaurants that changed Melbourne forever.
Eating Out
Don't miss out on the headlines from Eating Out. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Long before Instagram unleashed its tsunami of blagging bloggers and models with followers trying to fleece a free feed, Melbourne’s restaurant scene had real influencers.
People who created something unique, something others would end up emulating.
They are the visionaries, the stubborn, the passionate and the proud. They are the game changers who transformed Melbourne’s dining landscape for the better. The ones who have helped create the food capital of Australia.
Food identity and host of A Plate to Call Home podcast Gary Mehigan says Melbourne’s restaurant scene has transformed remarkably — for the better — since he arrived here in the early 1990s.
“Going to a bar, queuing at a restaurant, having a progressive meal over an evening out. It’s a very different idea to that of our parents, where they’d get dressed up for special occasions and be served by snooty waiters,” he says. “Melbourne’s now known for our casual dining at the accessible level, that’s what we’re famous for. People love to eat a progressive number of things which is a massive change in the way we eat.”
Often ahead of the pack and their time, these are the true influencers, the 10 restaurants and people behind them that have changed how Melbourne dines out.
CUMULUS INC
THE ONE THAT DEFINED ALL-DAY DINING
While he’s most famous for adding the lobster roll to the roll call of Melbourne’s most famous dishes — first at St Kilda’s Golden Fields (RIP), now seen at the city’s buzzy Supernormal canteen — but Andrew McConnell’s more lasting achievement is introducing Melbourne to the concept of all-day dining packaged with restaurant flair.
Opening in 2008 and from breakfast until late, at Cumulus Inc McConnell took his fine-dining eye for produce and provenance and transformed that into a menu that celebrated the simple in such a sophisticated way that the former rag trade warehouse has been packed ever since.
Whether it’s a tin of Oritz anchovies served with chargrilled sourdough, or the slow-roasted lamb shoulder served to the table to share, many ideas and dishes now seen on casual menus throughout Melbourne began life at Cumulus.
Mehighan calls McConnell “one of our cleverest restaurateurs”.
“I love the people who over the years have been brave to do something different, like simply serve a tin of anchovies. Or the simplest of something but the best of something and find that people are happy to pay for it,” he says.
CHIN CHIN
THE ONE THAT TAUGHT MELBOURNE TO QUEUE
You need only to walk down Flinders Lane to see the irrevocable impact Chris Lucas has had on our dining psyche. For there it is, whether on a sunny Saturday or winter’s Wednesday, the queue snaking out the door and down the road. Only a restaurant like Chin Chin, the phenomenon that heralded the era of the reservation-free restaurant, could still pull locals and tourists alike in such force while celebrating its eighth year.
Waiting for a Chin Chin table is a Melbourne dining rite of passage. Filled with everyone from 16 to 60, the bustling dining room has barristers and baristas sitting cheek by jowl tucking into fiery chicken larb and Thai goat curries and twice-cooked beef short ribs while downing beers brewed to spec, zippy, fruit-driven wines and cool tropical cocktails.
It spawned a hundred mod Asian imitators who wrapped their rice paper rolls and noodles in neon hoping to emulate its astonishing success, but there is only one Chin Chin (well, technically two, now an equally successful outpost has opened in Sydney), and that’s because there’s only one Chris Lucas. Melbourne’s restaurant Svengali with the Midas touch, from One Fitzroy St in St Kilda, through South Yarra’s The Botanical Hotel in its heyday, Lucas has been a towering presence on Melbourne’s restaurant scene, creating restaurants filled with youthful energy that ensures their pan-generational appeal.
Chin Chin might be his biggest success to date, but watch this space — with the game changing 80 Collins dining precinct and the French Bistro Batard opening next year, 2020 looks to be Lucas’s most ambitious yet.
FLOWER DRUM
THE ONE THAT ELEVATED CHINESE CUISINE
If you ask 100 Melburnians to name our most famous Chinese restaurant you’d likely hear the words Flower Drum a hundred times.
But it was another restaurant that arguably set the scene for the elevated Cantonese we take for granted today.
In 1961, The Golden Phoenix opened on Russell St, opposite the Southern Cross Hotel.
Owned by William Wing Young, it was the first Chinese restaurant in Melbourne to go up-market with linen-draped tables and elegant glassware and a kitchen staffed by chefs imported from the top restaurants in Hong Kong.
As daughter Elizabeth Chong tells it: “He wanted to get people out of the habit of going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering by number off the menu.”
Chong, who taught Australia how to stir fry via her much-loved cooking segment on Good Morning Australia with Bert Newton in the 1980s and ’90s, says her father employed a young Gilbert Lau to work as a kitchen hand and then on the floor of his restaurant. “(Gilbert) wanted to know the workings of a top restaurant, he was obviously looking ahead to what we wanted to do,” Chong says.
Lau would go on to found the Flower Drum, which opened on Little Bourke St in 1975. It moved to Market Lane in 1985 where it remains today under the stewardship of Anthony Lui in the kitchen and son Jason out front (Lau sold the restaurant to Lui other employees William Shek and Patricia Fung in 2003).
“Gilbert began a revolution in Chinese food. He was passionate about Cantonese cuisine and wanted to spread the word that it was impeccable and exquisite and people needed to respect it,” Chong says. “The old concept Australians used to have of Chinese restaurants was the plainer the better, they didn’t want to associate Chinese food with linen and fine china.”
Flower Drum changed that perception, becoming one of the most famous and celebrated restaurants in Australia, elevating Chinese cuisine across the country in the process.
“There’s a certain section of diners that take pride in saying, ‘I only eat at the Flower Drum’,” Chong says. “But it means people expect a good quality of Chinese food when they go out for a meal now at every level and throughout the suburbs. You’ve got to go way out back to get a really bad Chinese meal now.”
STEPHANIE’S
THE ONE THAT INTRODUCED PRODUCE-LED, SEASONAL DINING
Mehigan moved from London to Melbourne in 1991 and remembers one of his first meals in Australia like it was yesterday.
“I remember having the twice-cooked cheese souffle, I think it was on a watercress sauce. It’s one of those dishes that stick in your mind,” he says.
From 1976 for more than two decades, Stephanie Alexander’s eponymous restaurant — first in Fitzroy, then a grand Hawthorn mansion — was one of Melbourne’s best restaurants, where Alexander’s French-influenced fare was created out of a produce-first philosophy groundbreaking at the time.
“Coming out of London I remember thinking her food was very big, honest and home cooked,” Mehigan recalls. “I remember it being super delicious, but I’d come out of an arena where everything was petit and fine and beautiful. It wasn’t until a few years later, probably after she closed the restaurant (in 1997) that I understood the impact the restaurant had. Not only as a centre of learning but also about farm-to-plate, about sustainability and provenance. They’re all the catchwords today but she was preaching them 30 years ago. We weren’t eating that way back then.”
HUXTABURGER
THE ONE THAT MADE BURGERS COOL
It’s the bun that started the gourmet burger craze.
Daniel Wilson, Dante Ruaine and Jeff Wong opened their first Huxtaburger on Collingwood’s Smith St in 2011 as a spin-off to alleviate quiet lunch times at Huxtable, their restaurant across the road. As burgers boomed, they closed Huxtable and have expanded Huxtaburger to six sites across Melbourne with two interstate outposts now also slinging their beef, chicken and vegan burgers on a menu that runs a dozen-deep.
Taking burgers out of the fish and chip shop and into the hands of the inner-city hip, Huxtaburger’s retro-cool stores, craft beer tinnies and brioche buns made burgers cool — and an intrinsic, now indelible, part of Melbourne’s fast-casual dining landscape.
MOVIDA
THE ONE THAT INTRODUCED TAPAS
“Our food is designed to share.”
Go out for a meal today and your waiter will inevitably include this line in their daily special spiel.
But back in 2003 dining out was a much more selfish proposition, with order-your-own entree and hands-off-my main the order of the day.
That was until MoVida opened in the city and unleashed tapas on Melbourne.
“When we opened we had to introduce diners to the idea of sharing,” says chef and co-owner, Frank Camorra. “Now, food not designed to share is the aberration.”
Taking a site on cobblestoned but edgy Hosier Lane opposite the just-opened Federation Square, Barcelona-born Camorra served the food of his family in a modern Melbourne setting which quickly struck a chord with the city. But it wasn’t just the idea of sharing dinner that MoVida helped change attitudes to.
“The biggest challenge for us when we opened, it was impossible to get people to eat at the bar, or at high stools. We’d be completely booked out, but the bar would be empty,” he says. “I remember early on, (footy commentator) Dennis Cometti came in and Andy (McMahon, co-owner) tried to get him to sit at the bar. His response was, ‘Not good enough’ and walked out!”
Nowadays, a spot at the bar is one of the best places to eat — especially for the solo diner.
“Once upon a time sitting at a bar eating would be the poor seat in the house. Now, it’s the romantic ideal of sitting eating tapas in San Sebastian but you’re in the middle of Melbourne,” Mehigan says.
While daily specials means the MoVida menu is constantly evolving, some staples, including the braised beef cheek, the croquettes and caramel flan have never left the menu and the anchovy toast with tomato sorbet remains the restaurant’s most popular dish. “I reckon we’ve served more than 350,000 anchovies over that time,” Camorra says.
THE DOG’S BAR
THE ONE THAT STARTED WINE BAR CULTURE
It’s almost impossible to imagine today, looking around our city famed around the world for its innovative, exciting and boundary-pushing bar scene, but just 30 years ago you couldn’t have drink without a meal unless you were in a pub.
In 1989 that changed with the opening of St Kilda’s Dog’s Bar — Melbourne’s first modern wine bar.
Founded by engineer-turned-restaurateur-turned property developer Donlevy Fitzpatrick, Dog’s Bar created the template of what a Melbourne bar looks like now: a wide selection of booze served by knowledgeable staff teamed with a small menu of complementary, wine-friendly fare.
Enjoy having a sip in the sun? Fitzpatrick’s to thank for that, too, as his dogged lobbying succeeded in changing licensing laws to allow alcohol to be served in outdoor seating areas, as well as with without food.
As well as the Dog’s Bar, in the early 1990s Fitzpatrick developed the George Hotel complex around the corner on Fitzroy St, and opened the flagship Melbourne Wine Room, where a young Karen Martini would cement her rising star.
Mehigan says Fitzpatrick left an indelible mark on Melbourne.
“I remember drinking at the George, cleanskin pinot out of Duralex latte glasses with the smell of the grill in the air. Eating grilled octopus in this place with flaking paint, bare walls and tiled floor that had a touch of the Aussie pub about it. It was wonderful.”
VUE DE MONDE
THE ONE THAT TURNED DINNER INTO THEATRE
Granted, this could also be titled “The one that introduced bill shock”, but that would be downplaying the soaring ambition and significant achievements of a then 24-year-old northern suburbs boy who, in 2000, opened Vue de monde in a humble Carlton terrace.
But it was the move five years later to the city’s historic Normanby Chambers that cemented Shannon Bennett as one of the country’s best chefs and Vue de monde as its finest restaurant, where exacting classical French technique was teamed with the best-possible ingredients to create a multi-course, many-hour dining extravaganza that truly elevated dinner into An Event.
It also was — and on the 55th floor of the Rialto with its signature chef’s tasting menu, remains today — Melbourne’s most expensive restaurant.
With mirrors angled above the kitchen pass so diners could see Bennett and his chefs working, Vue added a sense of dramatic theatre to the kitchen, and, with a parting bag of brioche, muesli and tea for the morning, created a holistic dining experience that extended past its doors.
PIZZA ESPRESSO
THE ONE THAT TURNED PIZZA ARTISAN
With flour and tomato running through their veins — their father “Vito” Nicolini opened one of the first pizzerias in Australia on the Gold Coast in 1969 — Tony and Remo Nicolini were destined for the pizza game.
In 1998, after a decade in Italy, the family opened Pizza Espresso and, in doing so, started a revolution in the type of pizza we take for granted today.
With a focus on the dough and use of high-quality ingredients, chewy bases were cooked fast in a hot wood-fired oven until blistered and crisp. Elevated into a dish cooked with respect, the artisan pizza was born.
“At the time, pizza was topped with shredded ham and mozzarella and cooked in a tray. No one was hand-stretching the dough, or cooking the pizza straight onto the oven using a paddle,” Remo recalls.
“We were the first to do pizza differently, and people came from everywhere, all over Melbourne. Now, in every suburb there’s a decent pizzeria.”
Along with Pietro Barbagallo at Brunswick’s I Carusi, the Nicolini brothers went on to spread the artisanal pizza gospel, going on to open Carlton Espresso and D.O. C together before parting ways.
Over the next decade a slew of successful restaurants riffing off the same tune for the two followed across Melbourne; Tony now serves pizzas at Albert Park’s Italian Artisans while Remo’s doing the same at A25 in South Yarra, Docklands and the CBD.
ATTICA
THE ONE THAT INTRODUCED NATIVE INGREDIENTS
Saltbush and Davidson plum. Lemon myrtle and quandong and finger lime.
If you’ve dined in a contemporary Australian restaurant any time over the past few years you would’ve encountered many of these ingredients.
Possibly on the one dish — such is the (sometimes overzealous) fervour chefs have adopted the use of Australian native ingredients.
Once unknown products of our land are now used extensively in both sweet and savoury dishes — and we have a Kiwi-born chef to thank.
Ben Shewry, universally regarded as one of our brightest chefs, celebrates wild indigenous ingredients in thoughtful and emotive ways at his Ripponlea restaurant, Attica.
The autobiographical storytelling with which Shewry first found acclaim has transformed into a more profound philosophical musing on the relationship between food, cooking, the land and our mark upon it. It’s a journey that has led Shewry to embrace native ingredients and in doing so has helped define Australian cuisine. While Fitzroy’s Charcoal Lane has championed native ingredients for a decade, Shewry gave them a world-class stage on which to shine.
Whether a sabayon made from and served in an emu’s egg, marron served with a desert lime XO sauce or a lamington coated in black ants, Shewry interprets Australia with wit and whimsy in surprising — but always delicious — ways.
… SPECIAL MENTION:
RAY
THE ONE THAT STARTED COOL CAFÉ CULTURE
If you’re reading this at your local café eating avocado-topped sourdough and sipping a single-origin pourover — or a perfectly made magic — you have Mark Dundon to thank.
Opening in 2001, Dundon’s Ray café in Brunswick was ground zero for modern Melbourne café culture and what’s termed the Third Wave of coffee, which is defined by a focus on coffee as a high-quality product, rather than a commodity (the first wave was instant, the second espresso).
READ MORE:
Dundon went on to found South Melbourne’s St Ali café and roastery and is still involved in Seven Seeds — all bywords for café and coffee excellence that created the foundation for the Coffee Capital of Australia.
While Ray’s lo-fi aesthetic has been replaced by multi-zero fit-outs of new cafes, the focus on elevating coffee remains and is seen across Melbourne. From Ferntree Gully to Frankston smart cafes serving excellent coffee are the norm, not the exception.
Melbourne’s coffee scene sets the standard. Our brunches are world-beating, our cafes emulated around the country. And it all began in Brunswick.
Don’t miss the 2019 Delicious. 100 when we rate the 100 most delicious restaurants in Victoria. Get it in the Sunday Herald Sun on October 13.
Victorian winery named best value in the country
Acclaimed wine critic James Halliday has named this Victorian winery as the best-value in his annual wine awards — here’s where you can buy a bottle from your local.
How to get 20 per cent off food delivery
As Melbourne settles into another round of lockdown, many are stepping back into the at-home routines refined during the first wave. But for those shunning the stove, a popular food delivery service has knocked 20 per cent off all orders.