Cake for breakfast, croquet with wine, jumbo croissants and Austrian Greek cuisine are in store for Melbourne food fans next March. The annual Melbourne Food and Wine Festival launched its 10-day program today, featuring more than 200 events that span the hands-on to the haute cuisine.

A lunchtime giveaway of more than 1000 dimmies, inspired by the original but taken in new directions by up-and-coming chefs including Rosheen Kaul, will sit alongside a progressive five-course dinner and tour of the MCG, a residency by pioneering British restaurant St John, and hat-making workshops accompanied by wine.

“There are all sorts of cool things. If you want to learn, you want to eat, you want to do the things – we got you,” says festival creative director Pat Nourse.

Cookbook author Julia Busuttil Nishimura will lead a snack-punctuated stroll through the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne for this year’s World’s Longest Brunch.

“It’s like the world’s most leisurely running club, except you’re walking and mostly eating,” says Nourse.

At three different stops, guests will fill their plates with the likes of cinnamon buns, chive pancakes, and ham and gruyere tarts, plus their pick of the Ostro author’s cakes from a cake station.

The World’s Longest Lunch, a festival signature, will also be led by a Melbourne-made star. Curtis Stone is jetting in from his home in Los Angeles to prepare a three-course lunch for 1700 people at the sell-out event.

International restaurants (17 of them) will again team up with local venues, including Sezanne (“the most exciting restaurant in Tokyo right now”, says Nourse) collaborating with Brae, London’s Brat at Cutler, and Queenstown fine-diner Amisfield at Marmelo (opening soon). Fergus Henderson’s St John will take over the city’s favourite new-wave bistro, French Saloon, for a week.

Baker’s Dozen – a bake sale in the middle of Federation Square that’s become a festival fixture since its 2023 debut – will return in supersized form next year, with close to 20 of Victoria’s best bakeries participating, along with Sydney dough royalty A.P. Bakery. Pastries scaled to gigantic proportions will nod to the theme.

“It’s not strictly 13 bakers [at Baker’s Dozen], but we feel like no one’s going to complain about having extras,” says Nourse.

Plus, hit Copenhagen bakery Hart will open a five-day pop-up selling its famed cardamom buns, spandauer (jam and marzipan pastries), slow-ferment loaves and more.

Other events range from a showcase of global barbecue dishes at Dandenong Market, a tasting of Larmandier-Bernier champagne at Carlton Wine Room, and a southern Indian feast on banana leaves served beside the Yarra by Babaji’s Kerala Kitchen.

For the first time since 2019, the festival will again include regional events in its March program, after holding a separate program in country Victoria for several years.

The festival runs from March 21 to 30, 2025.

Pre-sale tickets for select Melbourne Food & Wine Festival events are available to subscribers of MFWF from Monday, November 25. General release tickets are available from Thursday, November 28 at melbournefoodandwine.com.au