Hot List Update: Brunswick East’s Taverna Joins the List (and Melbourne’s Greek Revival)

The Hot List is our guide to Melbourne’s most essential food and drink experiences, updated weekly. Learn more.

This week’s Hot List Activity

• Added: Taverna
• Most trending restaurant: Marmont
• Most trending bar: Purple Pit
• Most trending cafe: Moon Mart

What happened to all the Greek places? Throughout the 1900s, Hellenics opened cafes, milk bars, oyster bars and other businesses up and down the east coast. As people reckon every town had a Chinese restaurant, so too a Greek cafe. Some historians even credit Greeks – not Italians – with popularising espresso here. Alongside Chinese and Italian, it’s undoubtedly one of Australia’s most important and influential migrant cuisines.

Melbourne itself is famously home to the largest Greek-speaking population outside of Greece and Cyprus – not that you’d know it from our restaurants. While institutions like Stalactites, Jim’s Greek Tavern and the plethora in Oakleigh continue to draw lines, Greek restaurants just aren’t as ubiquitous as Chinese and Italian restaurants.

Good news: a new wave of openings is putting a dent in that deficit. The Hot-Listed Kafeneion kicked things off when it opened as a CBD pop-up in 2023. Since then, Yarraville’s Tzaki, South Yarra’s Astoria Bar Kè Grill and others have joined the party.

And last week we got Taverna, from hospo lifers and former Epocha owners Angie Giannakodakis and Guy Holder. Fittingly, it’s located in the same spacious building as George Calombaris’s original Hellenic Republic in Brunswick East, which Giannakodakis helped launch years ago. Hellenic itself was an icon of the last big Greek wave, when Calombaris also had The Press Club and Jimmy Grants souvlaki shops sprouting all over town.

The furniture and fittings have changed, but that’s about it. The smell of rotisserie lamb still hits you on entry, as does the happy hubbub of tables swiping at dips with house-baked olive oil bread and sharing other mezethes (appetisers). (Don’t skip the fava bean dip.) The cooking is superb. Much of the menu was originally dialled in at Epocha by Vanesa Colmenares, who shares the head chef role here with Michael Carins.

But it’s exceptional hospitality that’s landed Taverna on the Hot List so quickly – this despite the liquor licence still pending. If you’re not served by the charming, one-of-a-kind Giannakodakis herself, no worries. Her staff are almost as good, ferrying plates to the table with a smile and, from those with the requisite heritage, sometimes a proud statement about what each dish means to the Greek community. Bring on the revival.

broadsheet.com.au/hotlist/melbourne