Melbourne’s Best Restaurant, Bar, Cafe and Bakery Openings of 2023

We’ve put together our lists of the city’s best new restaurants, cafes, bars, bakeries and sandwich shops, but if you don’t have time for a longer read, consider this your cheat sheet on the best new venues of 2023.

Melbourne’s Best New Restaurants of 2023

• Alta Trattoria
Alta Trattoria is based on the humble trattorias in Piedmont, north-west Italy, where the menus are simple and the wine is abundant. Here, chef McKay Wilday serves up nonna-style dishes like pasta with rabbit ragu and spatchcock with polenta and silverbeet.

• Julie
The team behind Cam’s Kiosk opened this elegant Abbotsford Convent restaurant, where the kitchen team is doing some of the city’s best seasonal, produce-driven cooking. Standout dishes include Blum’s octopus ragu made using ring-shaped pasta, and snapper with a ginger and shallot sauce.

• Kafeneion
Based on the casual cafes of Athens (“kafenio” is the Greek term for a traditional coffee house), the menu at Stavros Konis and Con Christopoulos’s spot is nostalgic and unfussy, with fried sweetbreads, salty dips, free crusty white bread, slow-roasted lamb, bright Greek salads and carafes of wine.

• Matsu
This four-seat Footscray spot is the work of Korean-born chef Hansol Lee and his business and life partner Elly Hong. The couple serves kaiseki, a traditional Japanese multi-course meal format that involves small, intricate seasonal dishes, following a specific order and structure.

• Mensho
The first Australian outpost for this revered Tokyo ramen chain is known for its signature tori paitan ramen, which takes more than 30 hours to develop its flavour and is served with fresh house-made noodles and topped with duck char siu.

• Messmates
Two chef-partners with Michelin-star credentials, Jodie Odrowaz and Michael Clarke, brought a next-gen destination diner to Warragul this year. The duo’s unfussy cooking shows off some of Gippsland’s finest produce and takes cues from classic French and Italian cuisine.

• Nora Thai
The South Yarra spot is hidden away just off the busy Toorak Road restaurant strip and showcases fiery southern Thai dishes like dry red curry with minced pork and sour fish curry.

• Reine and La Rue
The Nomad team’s grand 140-seat diner in the former Melbourne Stock Exchange’s 132-year-old Cathedral Room opened to much fanfare at the beginning of August and has sustained the excitement since.
The dining room, with its stained-glass windows, gothic vaulted ceilings, limestone walls and solid granite columns, is in one of the most impressive rooms in Melbourne. Dual bars – a walk-in cocktail bar and a bookable raw bar – each occupying a long side of the rectangular room, are Reine’s defining new features.

• Toddy Shop by Marthanden Hotel
The menu at chef Mischa Tropp’s laid-back Keralan Fitzroy joint features rotating mains like dry pork or beef fry (pieces of meat cooked in lots of spices and their own juices until “caramelised and bouncy”) and fiery fish nadan (a traditional and spicy fish curry). Plus, a selection of completely vegetarian mainstays like kadala (a chickpea curry cooked with coconut and mustard seeds), Tropp’s mum’s cabbage thoran (stir-fried cabbage with coconut, turmeric and curry leaves) and flaky paratha flatbread.

• Yakamoz Mediterranean
Ali Atay is the executive chef and owner of Halikarnas, a Brunswick East Turkish restaurant that opened in 2021 and serves dishes “rooted in tradition” including karniyarik (stuffed eggplant) and cacik (a Turkish yoghurt dip).
Across the street is Yakamoz Mediterranean, a restaurant Atay and his son Ogulcan Atay opened earlier this year. At this sibling, the traditional dishes found at Halikarnas are often given a playful contemporary spin.

Melbourne’s Best New Bars of 2023

• Apollo Inn
Andrew McConnell spoilt the city with Apollo Inn, a 30-seat cocktail bar on the ground floor of McDonald House – a neo-Renaissance style building dating from 1924.

• Bar Bellamy
At this Euro-style cocktail bar on leafy Rathdowne Street, owner-couple Danielle and Oska Whitehart aim to create a convivial and familiar atmosphere where all are welcome. Martinis are a specialty and there are rotating twists on the classic drink such as the Lupini Tini, with sake and lupini-bean brine.

• Bar Tobala
Popping neon, bold cocktails, hot sauce bottles and eclectic music fill the room at this Mexican bar and restaurant from Frankie Jayasekera and husband, bartender Anthony Jayasekera, formerly of Romeo Lane. Anthony admits to being “painfully geeky” about cocktails and spirits. Here he’s developed a bold cocktail menu with drinks driven by seasonal experimentation that use mostly traditionally made agave spirits.

• Black Kite Commune
This dark spot from Gin Palace’s Ben Luzz celebrates a bygone era of late-night drinking and dining and takes inspiration from Melbourne’s boisterous 20th-century supper clubs.
For the centrepiece cocktail menu, venue manager Jess Clayfield (who has synaesthesia) drew on a sensory crossover of taste and sound with drinks inspired by, among other music, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

•Commis
The team members behind the bar at Commis are precise and so slick that watching them mix drinks delights even the most jaded hospo pro. The menu is filled with playful drinks like the Cookie Monster (cookie vodka milk punch with cacao and curacao), Butter Beer (dark rum, Licor 43, mill stout and warm spices) and the Paper Plane (a classic cocktail amped up when the bartender folds a real paper plane and throws it through the air after they mix your drink).

• Gemini
Tresna Lee and Shane Farrell answered Coburg’s call for a neighbourhood wine bar when they opened Gemini in September. It’s divided into three sections: in the front room, there’s seating centred around a sleek granite benchtop bar; next is The Pantry, stocked with wine, cheese, bread, craft beer and gifts; and at the back is the chef’s table, which faces the open kitchen.

• High Note
High Note is a quintessential Melbourne wine bar that doubles as an events and live music space. Its red neon lights and bustling atmosphere are hard to miss at the base of Northcote Theatre, the heritage-listed building that towers over High Street.

• Odd Culture
This Sydney transplant takes advantage of Melbourne’s drink-in bottle shop culture and laws. The team at Odd Culture, as the name suggests, is into beers, wines and other drinks flavoured by funky yeasts and bacterial cultures. There’s a great courtyard perfect for lingering over a bottle.

• One or Two
Owner Andy Chu cut his teeth at some of Melbourne’s best venues, including The Everleigh for four years, Above Board, Black Pearl and Byrdi. At his first independent venue, Chu condenses his 11 years of experience into a 24-seat cocktail bar offering just eight cocktails and 50 small-batch whiskies at this Chinatown whisky and cocktail den.

• Rose Island
This bottle shop and bar is inspired by the notion of creating your own utopia. It’s a welcoming venue where people hang out perched at the bar all night with an eclectic range of brews.

• Sardinas
Sardinas is an all-day eatery, wine bar and flower shop from the La Pinta team. There’s a retail range of wines and eight Australian wines on tap, which can be ordered by the glass, half-litre or litre bottle. You can also snack on house-made charcuterie sliced to order, dips like the bar’s beautifully purple beetroot and sunflower seed number, and plenty of differently loaded toast creations.

• Sporting Club Hotel
This local watering hole is a near-perfect corner pub to catch up with mates for a drink. Formerly the Charles Weston Hotel, it has been lovingly refreshed with the original name embossed in its 1896 facade reclaimed. Inside, a horseshoe bar opens the entire front room up where dogs are allowed to hang out while you drink. You can also bring your furry (or non-furry) friends to the sizeable outdoor area.

Melbourne’s Best New Cafes of 2023

• Chiaki
This cafe, which turns into a restaurant at night, specialises in ochazuke, a Japanese dish that sees a broth – traditionally made with tea – poured over a bowl of rice and toppings. Here they skip the tea and instead use a dashi-based broth with chicken stock, roasted sardines and prosciutto. For lunch, you can order the ochazuke set with sides of ceviche, karaage, potato salad, an onsen egg and pickles.

• Core Roasters
The set-up at Core Roasters is classic Melbourne – small street, small warehouse, small signage. Beyond the yawning roller door and forest-green facade, there’s a long coffee bar with a glassed-in pastry kitchen behind and, further on, a 15-kilogram Roastmax coffee roaster.
Core has three machines from Decent Espresso, a manufacturer founded by a software developer. Like many Silicon Valley companies, it has a rosy, utopian mission: build a small, affordable espresso machine that can emulate all others: from vintage piston-levers to the newest models from La Marzocco.

• Disciple Roasters
Coffee nerds are well catered for at Disciple Roasters, a backstreet coffee shop likened to a “coffee cellar door”. Drop in and you’ll find eight to 10 different espressos every day, plus pour-over options served in goblets priced anywhere from $5 to $200 or more. Just don’t expect to find any milk, dairy or otherwise –every cup is served black to let the beans’ characteristics really shine.

• Ima Asa Yoru
This Japanese cafe serves breakfast and lunch all day and izakaya classics with sake by night. You can get the signature teishoku (a Japanese set meal of rice, miso soup, pickles and your choice of either fish or eggplant), alongside a host of dishes including chirashi, a bowl of seasoned sushi rice topped with kingfish, tamagoyaki (rolled omelette) and rice puffs; mentaiko (cod roe) on Little Cardigan shokupan; tonjiru, a pork stew with soy milk; and mazesoba, a dry noodle dish with minced pork, vegetables and an onsen egg.

• Juniper
A follow-up to the wildly popular cafe Florian in Carlton, tiny European-inspired spot Juniper in South Melbourne is Dom Gattermayr and Rose Richards’s second foray into the Melbourne cafe scene.
The Juniper kitchen turns out more Asian flavours than its older sibling in dishes like the mushroom congee with pickled mushroom and ginger, morning glory, soft egg and chilli oil, and the miso roast potato with Japanese turnip salad. There are also stand-out sandwiches including a roast chicken and garlic mayonnaise number, as well as a broccolini baguette with stracciatella.

• Kare Curry
This Japanese curry shop by the Queen Vic Market has a signature roux that begins with beef, slow-braised for hours until tender, then combined with S&B curry powder and helpings of butter. Curries come on a bed of white rice with fukujinzuke (lightly pickled vegetables) or in kare pan (a soft bread coated in panko crumbs, filled with curry and then deep-fried).

• Ondo
Ondo specialises in bansang, a meal format similar in modularity to bento dining, combining proteins such as beef, pork, chicken and seafood with a selection of banchan (small side dishes), along with kimchi. Other highlights include yukhoe bibimbap, raw beef tartare teamed with garlic rice, cucumber and crispy seaweed; manduguk, juicy prawn dumplings in a clean, deeply savoury anchovy broth; and Korean drinks like sujeonggwa (cinnamon punch) and mugwort lattes.

• Roslyn Thai Cafe
Thai-style breakfast, snacky street food and dessert in the mornings till late afternoon is what it’s all about at this West Melbourne spot. There are dishes from across Thailand’s distinct regions, but comfort and heartiness are the common throughline. You might go for Thai-style pork ball congee with Chinese doughnut and a soft-boiled egg, or khai katha (pan-fried eggs served with a brioche roll).

• Sunhands
This spot, from the Heartattack and Vine team, is home to one of the city’s best breakfast plates, which comes with a soft-boiled egg and a wad of Akimbo sourdough haphazardly piled with salty butter and dip, plus the day’s selection of cheese, ferments and veggies. Or settle in for the inner-child-nourishing dippy eggs, elegantly throned in a chic egg cup.
At night, guests can sit inside or at one of the Drummond Street tables to enjoy a range of Victorian wines or some interstate drops from small-scale producers.

• Willim
This nostalgic corner spot in McKinnon pays subtle homage to milk bar confectionery through a Twix-inspired fit-out. Breakfast is classic cafe and revolves around various renditions of topped toasts, including sourdough piled with ingredients like spiced beetroot relish, fried eggs and Cumberland sausage.

Melbourne’s Best New Bakeries and Sandwich Shops of 2023

• Banh Mi Stand
There are only six banh mi on offer at this hole-in-the wall CBD spot. They include a cold-cut roll made with sliced ham, roast beef, pate and pork floss; a vegetarian tofu roll seasoned with roasted rice and salted cabbage; a hearty spicy beef sausage banh mi; and the stand special, a combination of grilled pork, sliced ham and pork loaf.

• The Butter Room
The star at this mostly Korean-influenced bakery is the lava pandori. This sweet Italian bread, baked as a one-person serve, arrives chimney-shaped and filled with strawberry, injeolmi (sweet rice cake) or matcha sauce. Once you remove the insert holding the filling in place, the sauce cascades down the sides, almost in slow motion.

• Drom Bakery
Croissants are the standout at this family-run newcomer. Here, there are creative variations like the twice-baked hazelnut and chocolate croissant; the mixed berry and custard croissant; buttery crème brûlée croissants; and even a “croissant sandwich” filled with pickled lobster, yuzu, chives, lettuce and celery.

• Good Days Hot Bread
It’s hard to go past the crunchy porchetta banh mi at this new spot by Nam Nguyen (also behind Good Days the restaurant). It comes with a generous helping of five-spice rubbed and roasted pork belly, crackling, XO mince, coriander gremolata and all the usual trimmings.

• Iris The Bakery
Copenhagen-inspired bread and pastries are on show at Iris. The staple is the flavoursome (and enormous) table loaf, which has great crumb, a thick and chewy caramelised crust on the outside and soft inside.

• Mali Bakes
This little cake window has given the team at Mali Bakes – known for vintage-style layer cakes – the opportunity to branch out and explore exciting flavour combinations and seasonal ingredients. The offerings change monthly and standouts since opening have included a matcha chiffon roll filled with sake-soaked cherries and white chocolate cream, and a roasted corn cheesecake.

• Madeleine de Proust
This Lygon Street bakery, from two chefs with Michelin-star cred, specialises in inventive and nostalgic madeleines. Rotating creations include a corn madeleine: a brown-butter madeleine filled with cream cheese and buttered cooked corn, topped with a popcorn ganache piped to look like corn kernels, then finished with a husk made from corn-infused chocolate.

• Pieman’s Son
The hefty pies at this hotspot offer a range of flavours: classic beef, Thai chicken, Moroccan lamb and beef ragu. One of the main vegetarian pies is inspired by the fillings of a spanakopita: it uses veggies, including garlic, onion and silverbeet, as well as herbs, including dill and parsley.

• Ruben’s Deli
This modern take on the delicatessen is a one-stop shop, with seasonal salads, sandwiches, customisable bagels and more on offer. Items include Nutella tahini cookies, cinnamon babka and Ruben’s renowned Reuben sandwich.

• Stefanino Panino
This Italian deli-style sandwich shop moved from Brunswick East to bigger premises at Collingwood Yards. Sandwiches are made on ciabatta rolls and include the Roma (porchetta, roasted pepper, provolone, rocket and Dijon mustard) and the Il Manzo (rare roast beef, provolone, picked and roasted peppers, red onion and Dijon mustard).

Additional reporting by Claire Adey, Nick Connellan, Daniela Frangos, Gitika Garg, Ruby Harris, Michael Harry, Evan Jones, Callum McDermott, Quincy Malesovas, Scott Renton, Jo Rittey, Chynna Santos, Sandra Tan, Moira Tirtha, Katya Wachtel, Harvard Wang, James Williams and Irene Zhang.