New restaurants to check out on your summer holidays
There’s nothing like hot chips, grilled meat and fresh seafood in summer. These are some of Victoria’s new eateries to check out.
Food
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There’s a heap of great new eats and drinks by the beach this summer.
Dromana’s Jetty Road has jumped on the ferry and has popped up in Lorne. Founders Grant Rogers and Blake Bowden have transformed the old Cuda Bar on the main drag into a bright, white ’70s beachy seaside shack and beer garden.
With space for 150 hungry-thirsty swimmers, the range of Jetty Road’s famed frothies are poured fresh from the keg, with easy-pleasing plates – buttermilk schnitzels, steak and fish of the day – and lobster rolls and buckets of prawns taking care of post-beach feeds.
Just up the road at the Lorne Hotel, CODA has turned last summer’s pop up into a permanent home above Frank Camorra’s MoVida, where chef Adam D’Sylva’s famed mod-Asian fare served in the CBD gets a seafood-heavy remix down by the beach.
In Lakes Entrance, Nick Mahlook (ex-The Atlantic) has returned to his hometown to elevate the humble fish and chip. A floating restaurant that once was the Raymond Island ferry, Soda Fish is a fish and chipper plus seafood bar and grill. Surrounded by fishing boats and making the most of their catch of the day, it’s all about food metres, not food miles.
Further along the Lakes Entrance foreshore, The Slipway will open on Boxing Day. A new outdoor dining and arts space, there’s beers thanks to Chris and Gab Moore of Sailors Grave brewing, delicious dairy treats – including taiyaki ice cream cones – thanks to Sallie Jones of Gippsland Jersey, and fresh wild-caught local fish cooked up by restaurateur Sam Mahlook.
In Sorrento, Jerome Borazio (Laneway Festival), Mark Hinkey (The Emerson) and snowboard champ Scotty James have opened Ocean Beach Pavilion, a family friendly indoor-outdoor space where there’s a “ninja warrior” course for kids, Asian-inspired eats thanks to Teage Ezard who’s added a seaside sibling, Gingergirl, to his CBD Gingerboy, and buckets of prawns to eat in or takeaway.
Pt Leo Estate’s fine dining restaurant has reopened with a luxe new look and elevated dining experience. With a two- or three-course a la carte offer on weekdays and a four- or eight-course meal offered on weekends, such dishes as lobster flambe, King trumpet spaghetti and oyster Elizabeth with Beluga caviar come from the kitchen of culinary director Phil Wood.
Nowhere near a beach, but a perfect Hume pit stop in Avenel, Fowles Wine – whose Ladies Who Shoot Their Lunch wild ferment shiraz 2018 was the only Victorian wine listed in Wine Spectator’s top 100 list for 2020 – has expanded and expansive outdoor dining, with hay bale “dining rooms” and picnic tables on the lawns.
But for those who are stuck in town, Brunswick East’s B. East has brought its buzzy burgers into the city with a B. East pop up on the corner of Swanston and Lt Bourke streets.
BREWERY MOVES INTO HISTORIC THEATRE
Castlemaine’s historic Theatre Royal is the home of central Victoria’s newest crafty brew house. Conna Mallett and Harrison Cox will pour their first Love Shack pale ales and lagers on New Year’s Eve, brewed out the back of the heritage-listed home of movies, music and merriment in the centre of Castlemaine.
The duo has installed a six hectolitre brewhouse and three 12 hectolitre fermentation tanks in the Love Shack, along with a bar which will serve their brews in the leafy beer garden out the back of the Theatre. The duo met while working at Collingwood’s Stomping Grounds four years ago, with Mallett going on to become the head brewer at Stomping Grounds Melbourne airport brew pub, which was shuttered in March due to the pandemic.
“When life gives you lemons, you make beer,” Mallett says. “I have always loved Castlemaine and when my family and I moved here, we saw so much potential in the town for a business like this, we just had to find the right site for it.”
Love Shack will launch with a core range of lager, pale ale and IPA as well as a summer passionfruit and pineapple sour. “We are installing a hand pump at the bar so will be experimenting with some English style ales when winter comes around,” Mallett says.
Love Shack will open on Dec 31 from 1.30pm and then Fri-Sun from noon at rear Theatre Royal, 30 Hargraves St, Castlemaine.
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