The Good Food Guide reviewers are on the road again. Here are the recurring ingredients, retro desserts and cocktails-with-a-twist we’ve been spotting on menus in Melbourne (and beyond).

Chunky noodles

Noodle pulls that might sprain your wrist are now a regular occupational hazard for food influencers. The ultra-wide biang biang (or “belt”) noodles from China’s Shaanxi province started it all, but it was mainly students or homesick expats that would seek out hole-in-the-wall shops that served them.

Now, handmade noodles from Korea and different Chinese provinces are made behind glass for lines of hungry, in-the-know fans. See Bowltiful, Paik’s Noodle, 1919 Beef Lanzhou, Master Lanzhou and Biang Biang.

Raw scallops

The scallop is standing on its own − and brilliantly − without the help of butter, cauliflower or other favourite partners. Find it raw or crudo-style at Bar Liberty, The Apollo Inn and Pipis Kiosk.

Chicken skin

The most prized piece of a roast chicken is stealing the show as a savoury brittle that tops chawanmushi at Yugen, is tossed through broccolini resting on fondue at Bar Bellamy, or finishes drunken chicken at Doot Doot Doot. Also spotted as a wafer at Myrtle Wine Bar.

Risoni

Maybe you know it as orzo, but names aside this humble rice-shaped pasta is carving out space among fancier and frillier pastas. North & Common luxes it up with spanner crab while Kafeneion honours the ingredient’s roots using it for a cheesy pasta bake. Comfort eating? Tick.

Show pony bread

Bread courses have been a fixture of dining for a while but chefs (and diners) are all abuzz over bread that’s not a chewy oblong-shaped slice of sourdough − although you will have to pay.

At the end of the Great Ocean Road, Totti’s puffy bread ($16) awaits weary drivers; in the city, a similar dome-shaped pocket is at Lilac Wine ($12). Both are indebted to Lebanon’s strong bread tradition.

Clover drizzles its tin-loaf with herby clarified butter ($11) and Saint Dining adds smoked salt to its flatbread ($11). Find springy potato bread at Little Picket ($10), Grill Americano ($16.50) and Hero ($15).

More offal

Chef Kyle Nicol opened Lilac Wine with a warm salad featuring smoked beef hearts, sliced wafer thin, Kafeneion is serving sweetbreads, Bar Liberty grills lamb tongue, and we’ve spotted duck heart skewers at Yugen and Poodle. Do frugal times mean offal is getting its dues?

Rum baba

If you like your dessert better with a splash or three of hard liquor, there are more babas to try around town, including Atria’s brandy-soaked number, No. 100’s with a scoop of white chocolate ice-cream for true sweet-tooths, Lilac Wine’s classic version (when it’s on) and the OGs of the genre: France-Soir, Carlton Wine Room and Cumulus Inc.

Flexing mussels

There’s no denying this mollusc is an affordable island in a sea of expensive produce right now. But nothing feels cheap about the stuffed mussels over cheesy baked eggplant at Bar Rosella, The Surly Goat’s trio of roasted cabbage, buttermilk and mussels, or the house pickled drinking snack at Shabooh Shoobah, brightened by gochujang and pomelo.

Signature martinis

When everybody suddenly drinks martinis, it’s only natural for bars to want theirs to stand out. Bar Bellamy sloshes in the brine of lupini beans, North & Common stirs in sun-dried tomato liqueur and Capers sticks with the theme via its Greek salad-inspired dirty martini.