What we covered in Melbourne food and drink this week

• The best new restaurants of 2023.

• The restaurant dishes our team ate and loved this year.

• A first look at the much-anticipated underground basement cocktail den Purple Pit by Joe Jones (Romeo Lane) and Maurice Terzini (Sydney’s Icebergs) in the CBD’s Queens & Collins heritage building.

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• A first look at Skinny’s, a retro diner (with standout chicken-salt hash browns) in an old Preston milk bar.

• A first look at restaurant-favourite micro-bakery Akimbo Bread’s first retail store.

• Stephannie Lui, Tom Sarafian and more of the year’s most exciting chefs named in the Broadsheet class of 2023.

• Michael Harden on the most impossible to book restaurants.

• Three of the best fruits de mer platters from Melbourne restaurants.

• Andrew McConnell, Natalie Paull and more superstar chefs will be teaching classes at The Agrarian Kitchen next year.

• The best Aussie cookbooks of the year.

You might have missed

• Adam Liaw’s tomato-and-prawn risotto with chilli butter. Poh Ling Yeow’s “Top End” laksa. And two pastas ripe for weeknight rotation. These – and more – are the recipes you clicked on the most in 2023.

Listen up

• This week on Broadsheet’s podcast Around Town, we hear about the plans for Moon Dog’s new Wild West-themed spot in Footscray; find out all about Meatsmith’s new cookbook; and talk about new crustacean haven, Muli.

As seen on the web

• Everything We Know About McDonald’s New Chain, CosMc – via Eater