Top 10 places to eat and drink in Victoria on a long weekend
The long weekend provides a perfect opportunity to explore some of the delicious dining on offer around Victoria. Here are 10 top spots for a fabulous feed that are well worth a road trip.
Eating Out
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SARDINE
It’s a cliché, but order the sardines at Sardine.
Fresh off the trawler from nearby Lakes Entrance, what chef Mark Briggs serves them with depends on the season, but in winter they could be barbecued and topped with a medley of smoked tomato, broad beans and sage, or in summer expect a simple Med vibe with chilli and garlic.
Ask for a quick lesson on filleting and you’ll quickly discover these delicate white-fleshed beauties are the highlight of a menu that champions Victoria’s best seafood in a quintessential East Gippsland setting.
LAKE HOUSE
This refined restaurant and retreat might be well into its fourth decade but Lake House is as relevant as ever, rarely missing a beat under founder and culinary director Alla Wolf-Tasker and her phalanx of honed wait staff.
Menus still sway with the seasons, with the lion’s share of produce now supplied by the restaurant’s own 15ha farm just minutes down the road.
Dishes are cutting edge but comforting, and always a pleasure on the eye — as is that view over Lake Daylesford.
TARRAWARRA
Tarrawarra has long been famed for its pinot and chardonnay and modern art museum but, thanks to chef Mark Ebbells, this Yarra Valley stalwart is now also worth visiting for some of the most creative and downright delicious food you’ll find in a winery setting.
Ebbells is making the most of the quarter-acre kitchen garden at his disposal, putting it to use in combinations you probably haven’t seen before, but will want to eat again.
Such as a fine dice of pumpkin and crisp apple bound in cashew cream and topped with quince and Yarra Valley salmon roe. Wow.
REED + CO
Hamish Nugent and Rachel Reed — of Bright’s late lamented Tani Eat & Drink — have turned their attention to gin and in the process have made Reed & Co. into Bright’s brightest eat-drink destination.
In a converted mechanics workshop, the distillery door — which shares the space with Sixpence Coffee by day — offers the signature Remedy gin tastings in the afternoon and fire-flecked fare by night.
Following a similar local-produce-simply-treated ethos that was employed at Tani to such acclaim, a plate of cured meats and marinated olives might precede local trout or beef, with subtle Japanese accents across the short menu.
SEVILLE ESTATE
Picture this: a cellar door in the Yarra Valley where you sip and savour some of Victoria’s best wines while drinking in a view that takes in vineyards, paddocks and misted mountaintops.
That’s what you get at Seville Estate … and that’s before you even sit down to a meal.
Seville’s restaurant — all pale timber and picture windows — is as enchanting, an informal space managed by a front-of-house team whose enthusiasm for the district and its charms is infectious.
Tucked down a dirt road, on a landscaped ridge, Seville Estate was named 2019 Winery of the Year by wine doyen James Halliday.
MIDNIGHT STARLING
Those in the know have long known that just an hour out of Melbourne the state’s best duck a l’orange is found.
At Kyneton’s Midnight Starling you’ll find Steve Rogers putting his experience gained in top Parisian kitchens to terrific use across a menu that comes in both a la carte and degustation form, both in the wood-panelled dining room and in the moody wine cellar below.
With a terrific wine list that teams Gallic classics with local heroes, Midnight Starling nails the French bistro brief with untold class, delivering a lesson in fantastically enjoyable food that never fails to bring a smile.
YIELD
Simon and Kara Stewart took over Birregurra Farm Foods and, on the first day of spring last year opened Yield, a one-two restaurant and provisions store.
It was exciting news for the tiny Victorian town of just 828, for now with Yield, Birregurra has two excellent reasons for food-lovers to pay a visit (the other being, of course, Brae).
In the handsome Main Street storefront space you’ll find Simon (ex Bespoke Harvest) cooking a daily changing set menu of four courses served with gentle humour and patent pride by Kara, who’s charged with telling the stories of the local producers to whom the concept pays its respects.
MASONS OF BENDIGO
There are few greater champions of the producers of their patch than Nick and Sonia Anthony of Masons of Bendigo.
Whether it’s the terrific all-Victorian wine list with its focus on local spirits and beers from within 100 clicks of Victoria’s fourth-largest city, or the extensive list of namechecked producers of the region across the large, peripatetic menu, Masons offers a true celebration of central Victoria.
Terrific smoked miso butter and cracking-crusted sourdough is a smashing opener before a choose-your-own adventure of plates large and small.
CAPE
Thrusting towards Bass Strait like the jutting prow of a ship, with views over the bay and championship golf course, the RACV Cape Schanck Resort is the Mornington Peninsula’s most dramatic building.
Cape, the resort’s signature restaurant, puts drama on every plate as well.
In the capable hands of executive chef Josh Pelham, steamed wild hapuka and Port Phillip calamari are lapped by coastal sea vegetables, while peppered loin of kangaroo gets down and earthy with kale, saltbush and finger lime.
MUSE AT MITCHELTON
Under the shadow of the iconic Robin Boyd-designed tower, Muse, Mitchelton Winery’s signature restaurant, nails its modern farmhouse brief within a Scandi-handsome dining room that boasts roaring open fire for winter and expansive vine-covered terrace come summer.
Familiar foods elevated and executed with class teamed with on-point service and value-forward estate wines, Muse is country style that’s all class.
FULL MUSE AT MITCHELTON REVIEW
