If there’s one word diners will know how to spell backwards by this time next year, it’s “vadouvan”. In 2024, the aromatic spice blend appeared on menus all over Victoria, from old-school pubs and seafood joints to Japanese fine-diners.

The single-serve scallop was the entree of the moment, stuffed chicken wings gave new life to a cut often relegated to the stock pot and saffron’s sunny hue infused rice, pasta and even cocktails.

Among the many highs of eating out for a living, there are always a few lows. This list of what’s hot (and what’s not) is part gratitude journal, part outlet for the mundane gripes of two people who perhaps spend too much time in restaurants. Take it all with a grain of salt, just as we wrote it with tongue firmly in cheek.

HOT: In skewers we trust

Eating the way our ancestors did must awaken a primal response. Why else would wooden batons threaded with charred meat, preserved seafood and marinated eggs give us so much pleasure? Snacks were speared at fancy fine diners, Spanish wine bars, neon-lit Sichuanese restaurants and fun Filipino spots in proof that nearly every culture loves to impale an ingredient. Skewers bridge high and low, they’re hand-held (circumventing the faulty cutlery that’s plagued us of late, see below), and they don’t warrant sharing. Is there anything they can’t do?

COLD: Wonky forks

If we’re forking out a few hundred bucks for dinner, is it too much to ask that our tines are aligned? An astounding number of high-end restaurants plonked mutilated cutlery on our tables this year. Beyond being unsightly, a mangled prong reminds us that not only has this fork been in someone else’s mouth, they’ve really gone to town on it.

HOT: Femme dining

Candlelit tables, paper doilies, soft pastels and even softer linens are taking over dining rooms all over town. Service is informal but intuitive, menus are handwritten and women are running the show. Dishes seem so effortlessly put together you might be left wondering if the chef showed up at all, but this cooking is bold in its own right, leaving nowhere for poor produce or technique to hide. We love Carnation Canteen’s grilled whiting with lemon and oil, Julie’s wine list favouring female producers, fruit and cream in cut-glass bowls at Ratbag, and free-form florals at Tedesca Osteria.

COLD: Badly engineered sandwiches

As sandwich shops snowball to what are surely unsustainable numbers, the art of sanger construction is under threat. There’s the uneven stack. The bite-n-slip. The dreaded tomato-directly-touching-bread-sog. All too often distribution must be self-managed through a combination of small, strategic bites. In truly dire instances the whole thing needs reconfiguring. Some do it incredibly well (we’re looking at you, Hector’s Deli) but others appear to be making sandwiches for the ’gram instead of our gullets.

HOT: Staff uniforms you’d be happy to wear

This year, we caught ourselves sneaking more than a few glances at employees’ chore coats, floaty dresses, branded T-shirts and cool caps. France-Soir’s new bar Le Splendide leads the pack with salmon-coloured waiters’ jackets. Servers at Morena don dapper beige linen coats, and Rumi’s entire kitchen crew rock black and white Adidas T-shirts (there’s no partnership, we’re told). Rothko-esque tops are a big part of Mister Bianco’s new look, and Tombo Den’s front-of-house ’fits are a collab between artist Hiroshi Tanabe and local fashion label By Johnny.

COLD: Silly Scotch eggs

The return of the Scotch egg is up there with one of the biggest disappointments of 2024. The problem isn’t with the original. It’s the kooky reinventions. We’ve had expensive lobster Scotch eggs where the egg’s closest connection to a crustacean seemed to be sharing the same coolroom shelf. Other examples were pre-cooked and warmed in the oven, their yolks set like gum, all the magic of the deep fryer lost. Like a Rich Lister who’s wealthy only on paper, most new-wave eggs can’t back up their flashy promises.

HOT: Solo-specific spaces

The recent uptick in person-sized nooks at restaurants is a delight to behold. No more must we pass the salt, maintain polite conversation, or wonder whether our fellow diner is looking at a sesame seed in our teeth. Bowltiful’s Elizabeth Street store has a wall of partitioned sections for surreptitiously slurping hand-pulled noodles. The sushi train at Bossa Nova is primed for solitary diners (as is the half-bottle wine list). And WeLive 2.0, with its many timber cubbyholes, turns hotpot into a single diner’s pursuit. No plus-one necessary.

COLD: Inappropriately tiny tables

Maybe our internet-ravaged brains are too distracted to get to the mains, but we’re ordering big on the small plates these days. And yet tables seem tinier than ever. This is a plea to kitchens and waitstaff everywhere: please don’t bring out every item we ordered at once, leading to an awkward game of table Tetris and the disappointment of crisp-gone-soggy prawn tartlets. There’s no room for claustrophobia at dinner. Space. It. Out.

HOT: Dinner party energy

In a trend previously owned by fine diners, small personal touches are now making meals extra-memorable at all kinds of eateries. Joyful artworks, poems, pleas and personal anecdotes grace menus at Hopper Joint, Embla, Pipi’s Kiosk, Bar Merenda and the forthcoming Marmelo. A chunk of good chocolate with the bill ends the night on a high at Carnation Canteen (don’t let it stop you ordering dessert). Even basics such as unlimited sparkling water, free bread and a shared dish delivered on individual plates can make diners feel all warm and fuzzy.

COLD: Edible blossoms

The only thing worse than flavourless flowers strewn across the plate purely for visual impact? The discovery of a black bug surfing the bloom floating listlessly atop your cocktail. Unless we’ve stumbled into a restaurant for goats or possums, let’s leave the flowers in the garden (or the vase).

HOT: Convenience store snacking

Is highly processed food making a comeback? In a shocking revolt against the artisanal obsession of the past several years, some chefs are flocking to yellow cheese and packaged white bread. See: the Wonder White chicken skin sandwich at Inuman, the same brand used to hold Earth Angels’ confit chicken wing. American cheese is preferred at New York deli-inspired spots (Saul’s, Nouns, Ray’s, JollyGood). Elsewhere, Moon Mart and the soon-to-come Suupaa elevate Korean and Japanese convenience-store snacks, such as katsu sandos, to new heights.

COLD: Sexist wine service

This one’s for anyone who believes the wine list should be handed to the man. That a table of women should be offered a glass of sparkling to start, but the blokes next to them deserve to peruse the full selection. For anyone who’s fobbed off a woman asking about wine with a one-line response, we implore you: do better. We’re ready to spend money and engage with you. Meet us halfway.

HOT: Wine as a mood

You’ve had a few crisp wines in your time. You’ve had notes of cut grass and jammy fruit. But have you ever sipped something that’s like leaping into salt water on a hot summer’s day. Or being cocooned in a big woolly scarf of a frosty winter’s night? There will always be a place for traditional tasting notes, but we’re loving the accessibility – and absurdity – of some waiters’ overly evocative drink descriptions.

COLD: Crustacean husks

The beauty of a great seafood pasta is its simplicity: silky starch of any size and shape, full-throttle oceanic flavours, ideally generous on the protein front. What is not required is an old, empty, almost certainly reused shell of a Moreton Bay bug plonked on top. Though the photographic opportunity is undeniable, any presentation that leaves you wondering how an item was sterilised is unappetising at best.

HOT: Reborn tropical cocktails

It’s been a hot minute between Pina Coladas. But, even in the depths of winter this year, we found ourselves gravitating towards drinks that read like a Fijian fruit basket yet tasted far more complex. Clever cocktail pros at Toddy Shop, Bar Bellamy, Askal, Songbird and Anchovy are doing astonishing things with coconut cream, durian, rockmelon – heck, even banana. The secret? A little salt, a bunch of acidity and the magic of clarification (straining off solids for crystal-clear drinks). These multifaceted sips are a party for your mouth, but they wouldn’t be seen dead wearing a cocktail umbrella.

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