A foodie’s guide to Melbourne
I came, I saw, I ate. I mean, I ate a lot. Every day, I packed away the amount a whole family might eat in a week. Why wouldn't I? I was, after all, in Melbourne, a city blessed with beauty and brains but also, a very sizeable belly.
I decided head for Victoria and spend a week exploring inner-city eateries, happy as a clam and hungry as a horse.
Instead of shivering at home, I would saunter through sun-baked parks beside the Yarra River, under jacarandas and lemon-scented myrtles, on my way to lunch.
A key question formed on the plane on the way over. How does a new venture gain a foothold in this hungry city? With so much good food available, in all styles and at every price point, it must be daunting for any restaurateur trying to take a bite of this crowded market.
So, I would spend five days checking out the start-ups to see how they were getting on. I would taste their food and check their faces for signs of nervousness. And what better place to start than breakfast?
High-end hustlers of the local cafe scene, Nathan Toleman, Sam Slattery, Ben Clark and Diamond Rozakeas have set up many of Melbourne's most famous eateries over the past decade, among them Liar Liar, Three Bags Full, Two Birds One Stone, Top Paddock and The Kettle Black.
Their latest venture Higher Ground (650 Little Bourke St) opened last June, and the place starts feeding you before you even open your mouth.
A former power station with brick walls rising 15 metres, rampant rambling plants and huge windows projecting shafts of light from the street, it's such a beautiful room, you can almost sustain yourself just by looking around.
Things get even better once you have a shufty at the day menu – a mix of retooled brunch classics and small plate offerings with a strong undertow of Japan, Italy and the Middle East.
The spiced cauliflower scrambled eggs are already famous city-wide, and the roasted mushrooms on polenta would have me swimming the Tasman for more. Unsurprisingly, the place was packed, its future assured by the fact that the venue was as special as the food.
To be reminded how much fine food flows around this town, one need look no further than the nearby Queen Victoria Market - a loud, pungent and crowded cathedral of calories, drawing worshippers from all over the city.
Food markets get no better. The place is patchworked with vivid fruit and vege stalls alongside a massive meat and fish precinct, endless French, Greek and Italian deli alcoves, cheesemongers, wine and craft beer merchants.
On the market's Elizabeth/ Therry St corner, another new venue has just set up shop. "It's early days" admitted the waiter at Pickett's Deli & Rotisserie as he slapped a steaming, herby quarter roast chicken down in front of me. "We've only been going a month, but things are looking good."
Home-cured bacon, spring lamb, an array of stuffed chicken and plump sausages, wild duck, thumping great lumps of beef- all the meaty goodness here passes through the rotisserie, often slow-roasting through the night to be served warm the following day.
The place was rammed, a ruck of happy punters tucking into various roasted delights on a communal table running parallel to the counter. Others drifted in and out for cheeses, charcuterie, a lunch sandwich or takeaway roast beef roll.
It's a more casual New York diner style eatery from Scott Pickett, best known for local fine dining joints ESP, Estelle Bistro and Saint Crispin. He chose the site for sentimental reasons: as a kid, Pickett used to stop into the Vic market with his old man for a grilled bratwurst after the footy.
But what a risk, surely – opening here, 10m from the city's biggest food market, a place where all manner of delicious tucker can be eaten out of a brown paper bag for a fraction of the price.
"That's one way of looking at it" said our waiter with the twitch of a frown. "But you could also say this place has huge foot traffic from people who already care about food." True. And certainly, my crispy, delicious chicken did not die in vain.
The following night, an Uber dropped my famished family off at Meatworks Smokehouse and Grill (28-30 Ross St) in South Melbourne.
The guv'nor himself, Lindsay Jones-Evans, was working the floor, delivering plates of mussels, char-grilled octopus, and pulled beef brisket that had sat in the smoker overnight. Above his head, the concrete ceiling was a mass of curving bumpy folds, like the surface of a brain.
"I designed this place, and built a lot of it" he said. "That concrete's like that because someone poured it on wrinkly plastic decades ago, when this place was built in the 1930s. It used to be a panel beaters' garage."
The co-founder of famous Sydney joints Jones The Grocer and the Victoria Room, Jones-Evans had moved back to Melbourne after two decades away because the city's food scene was "looser, friendlier, less greedy".
He had gone loose as a goose with the decor for this newest venture, which opened less than a year ago. From the roof hung an elaborate system of ropes, scaffolding and light fittings. In the corner, faux-Roman columns stood in a loose clump, like giant Pick-Up Sticks tossed against the wall.
"I found those in India" he said. "Pretty good, eh?" Yes, mate, but not as good as the tucker, which was fragrant, smoky and tender, cooked on a giant wood-fired smoker also built by the boss.
"We get a lot of locals in," said our waitress Shengnan Ren, who's Jones-Evans' wife and partner in crime. "But others are slowly finding us, too. Sometimes we're full; other times there's only five people here and I think- do you not know how good this food is?".
She laughed, a little nervously, perhaps. "But starting somewhere new is always very hard. We've been going nearly a year now, and I think we are safe. We're doing OK."
Not so our first port of call the following morning. "We've only been open a month," said Craig Tate with a sigh, his accent a rich Geordie burr. He and Richard Donovan, his best mate since they were nippers back in Newcastle, recently set up the Saint James (1376 Malvern Road) in the posh suburb of Malvern.
"It's been tough. We're still finding our way, really." The flash location must help, surely. Just up the road are the multi-million dollar mansions of Toorack. When their private chefs have a day off, the owners must head out for poached eggs like everybody else.
But what's going to make them come here, rather than a favourite spot in the city? Tate and Donovan are hoping a play on their English heritage will be their point of difference.
The menu includes Bubble and Squeak, Earl Grey pannacotta, a mixed grain porridge topped with rhubarb roasted in London Dry Gin.
I order a fish finger butty with a crushed pea aioli. "I grew up on fish butties," offered Tate, who readily admitted to watching Geordie Shore when he felt homesick. "So hopefully people over here might like it, too."
Mine was pretty average. The food was under seasoned, the presentation haphazard, the place almost empty. The Saint James felt like a venture without a strong idea of its target market, hoping a killer location might get them by despite so-so food.
It was early days, but of all the places I visited, this was the one whose future seemed most precarious.
When I finally die, quite possibly from over-eating, and ascend to my rightful place in heaven, I imagine it will look a lot like Milk The Cow, a fancy fromagerie in St Kilda (157 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda)
Have mercy, sweet cheeses! For a curd-addict like me, this would make a perfect final resting place: a sleek, air-conditioned temple devoted to coagulated milk fat, stocked with 180 different cheeses, all expertly aged by cheesemonger Laura "Rain Man of Dairy" Lown, who once worked in London, supplying lumps of cheddar and caerphilly to the Queen.
Yes, there's a fake grass wall and some udderly ridiculous lampshades made from old cow milkers, but never mind the decor- get a mouthful of that Manchego!
A five metre cheese cabinet runs the length of the place, and you can order cheese flights matched with wine, beer, cider, whisky or sake, all delivered to your table by a knowledgeable soul who likes nothing better than to bang on about the livestock producing each cheese, the wild pasture herbs they ate, the monks who strained the curds through their rough linen socks, yada yada yada.
I hoovered up delicious stinky-foot Eppoise, ancient Goada studded with popping calcium lactate crystals, a sharp blue Roquefort, gloriously creamy Ossau-Iraty sheep's cheese. Even my cocktail came garnished with a lump of Gorgonzola perched on the rim.
The next night was my last, so I thought, bugger it: after a week spent patronising new places, I would check out a restaurant that had weathered Melbourne's viciously competitive food scene for decades.
Donovan's (40 Jacka Blvd) sits wide and low on the beachside at St Kilda – a veteran establishment with 20 years in the game.
A riot of tongue-in-groove wood, pale paintwork and French Provincial bric-a-brac one reviewer described as "a Cape Cod fantasy designed by Martha Stewart", this wouldn't normally be my sort of place.
There were women with big hair, fake breasts and evening gowns, looking like The Real Housewives of Melbourne. There were rich men in chambray shirts and boat shoes, letting loose the sorts of braying laughs that sound best in a boardroom.
The food, however, was superb: a seafood-heavy mix of Italian, French and Spanish-leaning dishes the restaurant deems "modern Australian cuisine", though the food is really very traditional, the menu comprising subtle updates on classic soups, bisques, risottos and gratins, even Bombe Alaska, a dessert last widely enjoyed in the 1960s.
The staff all seemed to be French or Italian, and congenitally elegant. I felt like a scruff, but a fortunate scruff, because the food was some of the best of the whole gluttonous trip.
I ate course after delicious course, then took a stroll up St Kilda beach in the setting sun. Tomorrow, sadly, I was heading home, several kilos heavier.
Would the weather have finally improved? Perhaps. But for now, I was warm and well-fed, a grateful diner in one of the world's greatest food cities, lumbering along the boardwalk in the orange evening light, full as a tick.
Where’s your favourite place to eat in Melbourne?
Written by Grant Smithies. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.