Best places to eat and drink around Melbourne and Victoria this weekend
WHETHER pizza on the water, cool cocktails by the beach or a table at one of Melbourne’s hottest restaurants, here are Dan Stock’s picks of where to eat and drink this weekend.
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WHETHER PIZZA on the water, cool cocktails by the beach or a table at one of Melbourne’s hottest restaurants, here are Dan Stock’s picks of where to eat and drink this weekend.
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FOR FUN IN THE SUN
Hit the water
Arbory Alfoat has reberthed in time for summer on the banks of the Yarra. Last year’s surprise hit has returned even bigger, with two levels of pontoon drinking and dining offered from 11am until 1am daily — with bookings taken at lunchtime.
Get aboard the 69-metre floating behemoth for Balearic beats and Aperol spritz on tap, a good line in wood-fired pizzas and other Italian-inspired fare from chef Nick Bennett.
Gins and tonic are a focus – eight worldly drops each come with bespoke tonic and garnishes – while wines are no slouch, either, thanks to grape gun Raul Moreno Yague.
It all adds up to the most fun you can have on the water this summer. Get on board.
Arbory Afloat, northbank Yarra River, Melbourne. arboryafloat.com.au
FOR COOL COCKTAILS AND DELICIOUS DISHES
Raising the bar
Hidden in plain sight on Mornington’s Main St, chefs Stephanie Price and Fred Keene are serving dishes that are up there with some of the area’s best winery dining. What was a café has been turned into Bar Noir, where owner Ben Townsend is behind the bar shaking up a storm, and the chefs are busy with a menu in which the staccato haiku of ingredients — goat’s cheese tart, beetroot, honey; whipped cod roe, warm flat bread — belie dishes playful and precise.
The salmon tartare comes to the table under a huge glass cloche that’s dense with sweetly fragrant smoke. Tiles of creamy fish snuggle within a dollop of cream cheese with an underlying lick of that smoke. Slow braised lamb fills two fat kataifi pastry cigars, smoked yoghurt adding creamy heft to the sprinkle of puffed grains atop, while the tarama with flatbread — topped with a generous amount of Yarra Valley roe — gives George Calombaris’s version a run for its money.
Don’t miss the thin ribbons of kangaroo threaded on smoking bluegum that evokes an Australian summer, while simple pleasures, such as a hazelnut-crumbed pork cutlet is a classic executed with class.
The small room has gorgeously comfortable emerald velvet Queenie chairs that surround dark-stained tables and purple banquettes. There’s outside seating for sipping, either on the veranda or on the street, and Ben’s two decades of shaking and stirring means there’s much good drinking to be done. The signature noir martini is a black-and-white evocation of Australia that shakes Vantage — a spirit infused with lemon myrtle, Tassie pepperberries and mandarin oil – with ginger liqueur and bush pepper syrup, egg white creating a creamy crown to the ever-darkening drink underneath. It’s a showstopper on the two-dozen deep list.
Bar Noir is a terrific surprise package. Raise a glass and tuck in.
Bar Noir, 37 Main St, Mornington. Facebook.com/BarNoirBarNoir
FOR BREAKFAST RAMEN
On your bike
With a name referencing a B&W Italian classic film and not miscreants in the north, Bicycle Thieves has just opened its Northcote doors. From the team behind Hawthorn’s Bawa and Kew’s Remi, the sleek 80-seater is serving Dukes coffee, housemade crumpets and chilli-scrambled eggs for breakfast and slow braised lamb with cauliflower hummus and a panko-crumbed schnitzels for lunch. Get on your bike – if only for the breakfast ramen, a bowl of porky eggs and noodles that will see you off into the day in the most delicious way.
Bicycle Thieves, 445 High St, Northcote. bicyclethievescafe.com.au
FOR ONE OF MELBOURNE’S HOTTEST TABLES
Playing with fire
Taking over the ground and basement levels of the new United Places luxury boutique hotel, Matilda is Scott Pickett’s flame—, smoke— and coal-powered take on contemporary Australian dining.
The fire-fuelled open kitchen provides as dramatic an entrance as the dining room further back is masculinely opulent and comfortable and dark and moody at night. You can even pull up a ringside stool to watch the chefs in action —if you can stand the heat.
Highlights on the menu on which everything has been tickled with smoke and touched by flame are many. Flinders Island lamb ribs are assertively smoked and salted and gnaw the bones great, while a signature dish of spanner crab mixed with mayo and finger lime and served in its shell to spread on charry flatbread a bit of DIY dinner fun.
Whole tiger flathead is deftly cooked over coals, its bright sauce of smoked mussels adding rich depth, while namechecked steaks including a wattleseed-crusted wagyu bavette are treated with equal skill and respect.
A warm wonderland of flickering flames, Matilda is hot stuff.
Matilda 159, 159 Domain Rd, South Yarra. matilda159.com