Trending tastes

While some of Melbourne’s dining trends continue to evolve – such as gourmet brunch restaurants, cheese bars and designer Asian inspired eateries – others have been replaced with new eating and drinking habits in a city that keeps visitors guessing. Diet-specific restaurants, tea-type coffee, specialty pastries, and one-stop-shop eating, retail and entertainment destinations are some of the more recent trends spreading throughout the city.

DAYTIME DINING

Richmond café Top Paddock is widely renowned for using ingredients from leading producers to create beautifully presented plates – almost too pretty to eat.

Lemon Middle and Orange is located in a former paint factory in the backstreets of the Collingwood dining precinct and now churns sophisticated takes on classic breakfast and lunch dishes with an Irish twist.

Proud Mary is regularly voted the best café in Melbourne and Australia. It’s on the edge of the latest trends in coffee and has innovative breakfast menu items such as ox tongue, cotechino and smoked trout.

Notable Melbourne chef Matt Wilkinson continues to serve some of Melbourne’s best breakfasts from the help of top Melbourne café Pope Joan in Melbourne’s inner North and it has recently been joined by Jack Horner, a gourmet grocer, eatery and deli in Brunswick East.

Duck egg, breakfast ramen and lavender yoghurt are just a few staples on the artfully designed breakfast menu at Brunswick Street breakfast hotspot Hammer and Tong.

CHEESE BARS

Spring Street Grocer offers an exquisite variety of gourmet products and features Australia’s first underground cheese maturation cellars.

Shifty Chevre is a cheese bar/café in Fitzroy that offers some of the best local and imported cheeses on rotation, along with an open pantry filled with amazing homeware and French pantry staples.

Milk the Cow has a four-metre long cheese cabinet along the front counter and over 150 artisan cheeses that can be perfectly paired with boutique wines and beer at this St Kilda fromagere.

La Formaggeria has Italian owners who pride themselves on their signature cheeses – that include Buffalo Mozzarella, Fior di Latte, Fior di Bufala, Stracchino, and chilli and herb-seasoned cheese – as well as their offering of locally-made, Victorian, Australian and Italian cooking products.

VEGIE-BASED EATING

Transformer is a new vegetarian restaurant and bar in Fitzroy. On the site of a former electrical transformer warehouse, the menu is sophisticated vegetarian, with Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Asian influences.

Shakahari Too the second restaurant in the family (and the newest version) maintains the brand’s commitment to a completely vegetarian menu that uses only fresh, natural ingredients. Asian influences abound and those who are lactose intolerant, vegan or gluten free are well catered for.

Vegie Bar has a 20-year history and is arguably the city’s most loved vegetarian restaurant. Offering raw, vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free meals, there is no cuisine left unrepresented.

Moroccan Soup Bar is a restaurant that has no menu, no alcohol and no meat. It is a concept that could isolate many diners, but the crowds that flock to North Fitzroy’s Moroccan Soup Bar don’t seem to mind. Guests are happy to eat what they are given – all outstanding, vegetarian Moroccan-inspired cuisine, designed for sharing.

Admiral Cheng Ho is a specialty coffee roaster that also happens to specialise in meat-free meals. Its sister café Monk Bodhi Dharma has long been popular with plant-eating hipster types, and this new addition to the family serves up specialties such as quinoa pancakes with banana, coffee soil, ice-cream and butterscotch sauce.

Like Minded Projects in Fitzroy this space presents three food businesses in one: Abbotsford’s Coffee Supreme does the amazing coffee, Fred Gets the food and Ace the ice cream. Most of the food at Like Minded Projects is vegan, mostly gluten free and free from refined sugar.

MEAT AND BARBECUE

The French Milkbar is a local bouchon serving homemade and seasonal meals, that also runs specialist charcuterie courses.

Fancy Hanks serves traditional, American style slow-cooked barbecue that includes beef and pork ribs, brisket, pulled pork and ‘beer can’ chooks, all cooked for up to 16hrs using traditional pit smokers.

Meatmother is a trendy, American-style barbecue joint serving oak-smoked brisket and ribs, as well as craft beer and bourbon.

Meatmaiden is an offbeat basement restaurant in the city centre that focuses on grilled and smoked meat cuts as well as craft beers and bourbon.

Ironbark is dedicated to American style barbecue dining at its best, smoking succulent cuts of Victorian meats using sustainable timbers in a shed that is attached to a motorbike workshop.

Backstreet Eating is a modern neighbourhood bistro located that in back streets of Fitzroy that has a meat drying room downstairs, and a menu that features an assortment of house-cured meats

Two Little Pigs Charcuterie is a charcuterie-obsessed cafe in Brunswick that combines a love of coffee with a passion for pork.

Meatsmith is a butcher, headed up by Melbourne chef and restauraneur Andrew McConnell and Troy Wheeler former head butcher at Peter Bouchier in Smith Street, Collingwood.

SPECIALTY PASTRIES

Doughboys Melbourne goodies have popped onto menus all over the city this year – think flavours such as Merlot, Maple Bacon, Earl Grey and Lime Toast donuts. A new permanent location at 535 Bourke will keep customers guessing what flavours are next.

Lune Croissanterie is often seen with customers lining up at 5am at their Elwood waiting for Kouign-Amann, croissants, cruffins and delicious pastries.

Two Little Pigs serves great coffee at their Brunswick café along with their Doughcakes – a cross between donuts and pancakes

Tivoli Bakery is famed for its cronuts (a cross between croissants and donuts) and their gorgeous selection of breads including sourdough, spelt, soy and linseed and multigrain.

Butterbing offers some amazing cookie sandwiches with flavours that include Salted Caramel, Chocolate Orange, Peanut Butter, Nutella and Vanilla Bean.

FOOD COLLECTIVES

Swan Street Chamber of Commerce is helping redefine Richmond’s Swan Street. This temporary space is home to numerous delicacies and experiences including: artisan chocolate, a bakery, ice cream, a cereal bar, specialty coffee, a music shop, a boutique cinema and meals provided by a rotating gallery of food trucks.

The Archway is a new precinct in the west-end of the city that houses five food outposts where visitors can pick up a coffee, bagel, a smoothie, pressed juice, modern-Indian food, macarons,  delicious cakes and more.

Upper West Side is changing the landscape in the increasingly activated west-end of Melbourne city grid with a diverse mix of designers, retailers and food trucks every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.