I’m coming to Melbourne for the week. Where should I eat? The critic’s top picks for visitors

• More reviews from Besha Rodell

The first time my husband came to Melbourne, we were visiting from America, where we lived at the time and where he is from. The trip felt magical, but also fraught: would this city, my hometown about which I’d been evangelising for years, live up to the lofty expectations I’d set?

On the first day of that trip, we walked from my brother’s house in Fitzroy towards the Queen Victoria Market, and along the way I had a mild money panic and got flustered and had to stop at an ATM. “Go ahead,” I told him, “I’ll catch up and meet you in the deli section.”

He hugged me, in part to calm me down, but also to whisper, “I’ve been waiting over a decade to see this piece of you, to see your face when you show it to me. I can wait a few minutes more.”

‘When introducing someone to Melbourne, I’m looking primarily for a sense of place, something they can’t find in Los Angeles or Paris or London.’

I think about that moment a lot now that we live here, and now that we have visitors from all parts of our lives coming to Melbourne to see what I’ve been babbling on about all these years. The markets, the restaurants and the bars aren’t just places to eat and drink. They represent the city that formed me, that I still love obsessively, and showing them off makes me feel as though I’m letting friends and family from elsewhere into a piece of my soul that I’ve long been desperate for them to know and understand.

During the school holidays, many of you may have people visiting from elsewhere. Which restaurants and bars and markets best represent the city you live in and love? I’ve been pondering this for years. Thanks to a long culinary career, first working in restaurants and then as a writer, most of the people in my life are food people who have travelled and eaten extensively. So when introducing someone to Melbourne, I’m looking primarily for a sense of place, something they can’t find in Los Angeles or Paris or London.

Here are the places that get to the heart of my favourite city, the ones I’m most likely to take international and interstate visitors. Combined, they provide a window into the essence of Melbourne and, in turn, into who we are as Melburnians.

Kafeneion

I said it in my first review of Con Christopoulos’ home-style Greek restaurant when it was a pop-up on Bourke Street. I said it again in my second review, when it relocated to Supper Club on Spring Street, and I’ll say it here: right now, I’m not sure there’s a restaurant in town that so wonderfully captures the soul of Melbourne. No one element is responsible, but rather, it’s the alchemy of the building, the food, the drink and the service, all tucked up a staircase that you’d miss if you weren’t in the know. If you’ve ever been in a great vintage Melbourne room on a busy night with a waiter who has hospitality in their bones, you know what I’m talking about. There’s an energy to this place that just can’t be manufactured.

First floor, 161 Spring Street, Melbourne

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Jim’s Greek Tavern, for its raucous vibe, its simple and beautiful take on Greek cooking, and that gruff but loving service. I find that foreign visitors get a kick out of that iconic Greek Australian accent held by most waiters here, too.

Also up a stairway, The Waiter’s Restaurant feels like another well-kept secret, something only locals know about. But you have to be careful with this one. I once took a fancy New York editor here, the type who plans her travel around Noma bookings, and she didn’t get it. It serves a type of Italian food that’s specific to Australia, and it has an atmosphere that feels like home to me. Don’t bring your wine-snob friends; bring people who want to know what it was like to grow up drenched in garlic butter.

Queen Victoria Market

Taking people to the market is an obvious and touristy thing to do, but it feels like taking someone into my home, into my heart. I grew up shopping here; I still shop here, and I’m not sure everyone appreciates how special it is to have a market of this size and quality in the middle of the city. I missed it all the time when I lived overseas, and never found anything in other cities to compare. My itinerary for visitors is Bratwurst Shop, gozleme from the Borek Shop, and then – obviously – hot jam doughnuts from the American Doughnut Kitchen (which, I explain, is not American at all). Finally, we shop for bread, cheese and wine and head to one of the nearby parks for a classic Melbourne picnic.

Queen Street, Melbourne

Navi

Our fine dining scene has morphed over the past 10 years, and we’re finally in an era when specifically Australian food is dominant rather than Eurocentric copies of fancy restaurants in other parts of the world. These days, if I had to pick one meal that highlights this for a seasoned world traveller, it would be Navi. That’s partly because it feels so personal, with Julian Hills (The Age Good Food Guide 2023 Chef of the Year) foraging many of the ingredients himself, and even making the ceramics by hand. The food is creative, beautiful and delicious. The setting is less awe-inspiring than, say, Vue de Monde, and less bucolic than Brae; it’s a small, elegant room tucked into a mainly residential part of Yarraville. But it makes up for this by its cost – almost half of those other venues working in this sphere.

83b Gamon Street, Yarraville

HONOURABLE MENTION

Some travellers wouldn’t think of coming to Melbourne without a visit to Attica, and they would not be wrong to feel excited about a meal from Ben Shewry, who is largely responsible for the proliferation of this type of cooking. A meal at Attica is always thrilling, and I’ll happily tag along whenever anyone wants to go.

Flower Drum

Look, my friends from California and New York don’t need to see most of Melbourne’s amazing Chinese restaurants, given that the options in their own home towns are so diverse. But Flower Drum is something truly rare, even on a global scale: a fine-dining Cantonese restaurant that does the classics with absolute care, while also innovating. The service alone is remarkable; there’s plenty on the wine list for the vinophile, and the diverse clientele showcases the wide range of Australians who appreciate this kind of old-school room.

17 Market Lane, Melbourne

HONOURABLE MENTION

To see what this long tradition of Chinese fine dining has produced in Melbourne in the modern era, a visit to Lee Ho Fook is always worthwhile.

The pub

Whatever “the pub” means to your household or circle of friends, no matter how daggy or seemingly unimpressive it is, if you have international visitors, take them to the pub you most often frequent. It’s a part of Melbourne life that helps to make us who we are. Most of the rest of the world either has no real pubs, or the pubs they do have are nothing compared with ours. (There are obvious exceptions, particularly in the UK, but still: our pubs are great!)

My picks: The Standard in Fitzroy, The Lincoln in Carlton, The Brandon in Carlton North, The Builders Arms in Fitzroy if I’m feeling fancy. But pubs are a personal choice and I bet yours is just perfect.

Serai

A cheffy durian-flavoured take on the Golden Gaytime? Modern Filipino dishes made with kangaroo, Murray cod and king prawns? Here’s a restaurant that represents Melbourne’s present and its future, a place that couldn’t be anywhere but Australia, and which showcases some of the exciting young talent we have in the city.

Racing Club Lane, Melbourne

HONOURABLE MENTION

I have yet to eat at Askal, the new modern Filipino restaurant in the CBD, but this is a trend I’m very excited about.

Carlton Wine Room

Melbourne does wine bars better than any other city I’ve visited, and to prove it I often take visitors, bleary-eyed off a long flight, to Carlton Wine Room. It’s such a lovely, convivial space and introduces people to the kind of laid-back excellence available all over the city. Granted, it’s very near my house, but the great news is that there’s probably something equally good near your house, too.

172-174 Faraday Street, Carlton

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Too many for a complete list! Embla, Gerald’s, Clover, Lilac, Bar Liberty, Commis, Marion, Etta, City Wine Shop, Auterra … I could go on and on.

Caretaker’s Cottage

I’ve recently discovered that it isn’t common knowledge that Melbourne has long punched well above its weight in the international cocktail scene. I was aware of its global reputation before moving home, partly because I regularly attended Tales of the Cocktail, an annual conference and awards ceremony in New Orleans where Melbourne bars and bartenders scooped up awards left and right.

The Melbourne bar currently getting the most accolades is Caretaker’s Cottage. Housed in a tiny former caretaker’s cottage smack in the middle of the city, surrounded by skyscrapers, it’s about the most charming joint around. The owners have resumes that list the city’s best bars, and the drinks show it. But so does the sense of welcome, the perfectly calibrated music (spun live by bartenders who double as DJs), the unabashed fun of it all.

139-141 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne

HONOURABLE MENTION

Again, there are almost too many to name, but Black Pearl must get a shoutout as the tiny bar that helped shoot Melbourne to cocktail fame. It’s where almost all the most accomplished bartenders in town have worked at some point, and still makes the best Hemingway daiquiri around.

Big Esso

I wish there were more specifically Indigenous-owned and operated restaurants to choose from, but Big Esso by Mabu Mabu in Fed Square is a must-visit as part of the long and storied history of this land’s original foodways.