The best dishes to eat around Melbourne and Victoria in 2018
WHETHER it’s a posh take on a seaside fave, a swoonworthy version of a breakfast staple, or the best vegetarian dish you’re likely to taste, here are the 20 top dishes to try around Victoria right now.
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WHETHER it’s Ramblr’s posh take on a seaside fave, Pt Leo’s swoonworthy take on a breakfast staple, or the best vegetarian dish you’ll likely to taste, here are the 20 top tastes to try around Victoria right now.
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MARRON LOADED FRIES AT RAMBLR, $48
Everyone’s fast-food favourite gets a high-end rev-up at Nick Stanton’s Chapel St diner. This dish is simple but luxurious, with glorious butter-poached marron on a thatch of crunchy shoestring fries “loaded” with a creamy, sharp kimchi and cheddar mornay. Claw-tastically good.
DRUNKEN CHICKEN CRUMPET AT PT LEO, $24
The breakfast staple gets a high-end makeover for lunch at Mornington Peninsula’s bustling wine-dine-art park, Pt Leo. When baked in a wood oven the humble crumpet takes on new heights — crisp, airy and tickled with smoke — but soars into the stratosphere when topped with tender chicken poached in shaoxing and ginger, then finished with a kombu butter sauce. Utterly memorable. Consider this the thinking person’s crumpet.
LAMB RIBS AT MATILDA, $28
Scott Pickett’s fire-powered kitchen at his gorgeously handsome Domain Rd restaurant Matilda is turning out all sorts of smoky, flame-licked, coal-cooked fare, but it’s the paperbark smoked ribs from Flinders Island lamb that has us back through the door. Assertively smoked and confidently salted, they’re meaty and more-ish, with great gnawing stickiness at the end of the bones. Pick them up and don’t look back.
VEGEMITE ROTI AT SUNDA, $10
It’s the bonkers/brilliant off-menu dish that’s off-the-charts and heralds Khanh Nguyen’s take on South-East Asian flavours melded with indigenous Australian ingredients as nothing less than completely inspired: Vegemite-spiked curry butter served with buttery roti fried to a crunch. The dark, yeasty cultured butter comes with a dimple filled with curry oil that’s smoky and cardamom bright with a sweaty, humid heat. They run out so order early so go and see what all the fuss is about.
DUCK & WAFFLE AT LENNY, $21
No sophomore slump at Christina Higgins and Steve Svensen’s Lenny in Albert Park, the follow-up to their packed Armadale cafe Moby 3143. Their duck & waffle does what it says on the pack, teaming a duck leg — skin tanned and flesh pull-apart perfect — with a herb-flecked savoury waffle to delicious effect. Add a just-set fried egg, a simple salad with apple to counter the rich meat and a juniper-infused maple syrup, and your new favourite grown-up brunch is served.
SARDINES AT SARDINE, $19
The haters gonna hate, but at his restaurant on the Gippsland Lakes named after them, Mark Briggs is doing his level best to show sardines off in the very best light. Fresh off the Lakes Entrance boat and into the pan, a half-dozen whole fish are perfectly cooked, the flesh without a hint of the fishiness familiar to its canned cousins effortlessly falling from the bone. A sprinkle of salt flakes and a squeeze of lemon lets the flappingly fresh fish shine, though a sauce of blitzed coriander hiding pops of finger lime adds just the right amount of verdant vibrancy.
BLOOD PUDDING ROLL AT STOKEHOUSE, $12
Head chef Ollie Hansford’s recent menu overhaul has seen the biggest changes on the plate since the Stokehouse 2016 reopening, and the snacking game is strong. Like a posh sausage roll, rich house-made black pudding is wrapped in paper-like pastry and dotted with an acidic red cabbage ketchup worthy of its own market stall.
CHILLI FOLDED EGGS ON FLATBREAD AT IVY AND PEARL, $16.90
The Mod Med menu at Ivy and Pearl in Rosanna holds plenty of brunch treats, none more appealing than this tangy heart starter. Owner-chef Daniel Kadamani whips up a fluffy, eggy storm, folding fried bacon through it and bedding the lot down on charred flatbread. The tongue tingling spice comes from generously applied Aleppo pepper, nodules of Persian feta and green harissa.
ACAI BOWL AT LORNA, $16
Top of the morning … that’s the acai bowl at Lorna Cafe in Ferntree Gully. Who needs smoothies and shakes, let alone smashed avo, when you can dive into one big, artfully arranged bowl of granola, coconut yoghurt, Indian gooseberry jelly, peanut butter and banana? Just ordering this makes you feel virtuous.
ROASTED CHICKEN AT MUSE, $32
On one hand, it’s simply roast chook. On the other, it’s so much more thanks to chef Dan Hawkins, whose cooking smarts honed at Stokehouse, Circa and Longrain, are put to excellent use on Goulburn Valley produce at Mitchelton winery’s new restaurant, Muse. A gloriously golden-skinned bird is served in an enamel bowl with big hunks of smoky bacon, crunchy crostini and a few pine mushrooms. The confidently cooked chicken — tender, juicy, with just a hint of pink — is drizzled with a rich jus gras and topped with herb salad including fresh tarragon and nettle.
VINCISGRASSI AT LELLO, $28
Chef Leo Gelsomino has perfected his version of Vincisgrassi — a lasagne from the Marche region of Italy — over many years and it is, right now, quite simply the most extraordinary pasta being served in town. Feather light, handmade pasta sheets layer a beef ragu amped with a tiny dice of veal sweetbreads and lambs brain. There’s added creaminess from the lightest touch of béchamel, a smattering of fresh parmesan on top baked to a crunchy crust. It’s last-meal stuff.
SRI LANKAN HOPPER AT BINGA AND MOOCH, $12 PLUS EXTRAS
Out on Melbourne’s eastern fringe, Park Orchards is too big a trip for some brunch hunters. But fans of Binga and Mooch are devoted to the cafe’s Sri Lankan hopper. They love the way chef Colin Swalwell lightly toasts his frilled rounds of roti (called hopper in Sri Lanka), so they’re pliable enough to contain poached eggs, along with extras including wilted bok choy, bacon crumbs and crisp mushrooms. Piping hot chilli hollandaise seals the deal.
PRAWNS AND PUMPKIN CREAM AT DOOT DOOT DOOT, (FIVE-COURSE MENU, $110)
Exec chef Guy Stanaway’s five-course menu changes monthly so fingers crossed your visit times with this punchy prawn dish. It was love at first bite: the prawns — memorably smoky, fragrant and charry-fleshed from the grill — doubling down with shell oil, and keeping fine company with a silky pumpkin cream and offset with pops of finger lime. Balanced, textural, delicious.
LENTIL AND FETA GUL BOREK AT MAHA, FOUR COURSES, $60
If the four-course Soufra menu at Maha is an insight into the “relaxed side” of Shane Delia’s stylish city souk, then this dish sees the chef in full rustic mode. The word borek describes a kind of Turkish pastry which Delia fashions into coils and wraps around black cabbage, lentils and feta. It’s comfort food at its best and enriched with a sticky fermented garlic sauce.
PIG’S HEAD SANGA AT CONGRESS, $8
Don’t let the name put you off. Think of it less as pig’s head, and more as one of the best three-bites you’ll eat all year. At this Collingwood wine bar, between two slices of fluffy soft white bread, a fat, crunchy-fried puck is filled to bursting with rich porky goodness, the slow-cooked gelatinous pork is set with a chicken jus jelly that liquefies and bursts upon first bite, like a soup dumpling. Along with a squirt of vibrant green mustard leaf mayo and some baby capers to cut through, it’s a dripping mess of yes. What’s not to like?
SPANNER CRAB AND CONGEE AT ALTAIR, $20
The combo of sweet crabmeat, toothsome grains including barley, quinoa and rye, and juniper berries are good, but poured with a warm crocodile tea — giving a luscious, fatty, chicken skin-like mouthfeel — and the good is amped to great. It’s just one of the many impressive dishes of quirky collaborations of flavours and starring curious native ingredients at this Zone 2 gem, helmed by husband and wife Kelvin and Michelle Shaw.
EUGOWRA QUAIL AT ANCHOVY, $28
Thi Le’s three-year-old modern Asian Brigde Rd restaurant goes from strength to strength, and her quail is the perfect case in point. A whole bird from boutique farmers Eugowra is served in all its unapologetic beak-to-claw glory, cleverly portioned and jigsawed back together for easy eating. Its deeply roasted skin comes seasoned with Uyghur peppery spice, a sharp barberry sauce adding a fruity foil to all that dancing heat. It’s a knockout.
ABALONE, MUSHROOMS WITH MALTAGLIATI AT ROCKPOOL, $39
Meat might be the main game at Neil Perry’s Melbourne flagship but this seafood pasta dish is a real scene stealer. We love the way they sautee ribbons of fresh abalone, then weave them through unevenly cut maltagliati (native to Italy’s Emilio-Romagna region).
The addition of king brown mushrooms and grated bottarga (cured fish roe)? Inspired.
SAFFRON, RICOTTA GNOCCHI AT TRANSFORMER, $22
Who would have guessed that a vegetarian restaurant in deepest Fitzroy could send out the dreamiest gnocchi in town? Then again, anyone who frequents Transformer knows the food here is delicious and precisely prepared. The gnocchi here — light as air and showered with parmesan — is elevated with peas, tarragon, thyme and cultured butter.
BLACK CABBAGE, PEAR DESSERT AT MATTEO’S, $22
One of Melbourne’s great stayers, Matteo’s always stays open to the winds of reinvention. Just look at chef Rhys Blackley’s wallaby tail soup, miso-baked toothfish and roasted beurre bosc pear dessert. What an inspired idea to enrich the pear with leatherwood honey ice cream and lemon myrtle custard, then have it wear a Jerusalem artichoke wafer.
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