Winter Foodie Weekend in Melbourne

Friday night 

Arrive in Melbourne. You must be hungry after your journey!  

If you haven’t already made a reservation for dinner, head to Flinders Lane - between Swanston and Spring Streets - for dozens of great dining experiences. Have a bit of fun walking the three blocks, reading menus and deciding where you’d like to eat. Or perhaps create your own degustation by having some snacks at a few venues.  Prefer solid recommendations? Try Lucy Liu for pan-Asian fusion or Cumulus Inc for euro-inspired modern Australian.

Try an after dinner night cap at one of the great bars in the neighbourhood such as Trinket (enter through the cupboard!) or The Apollo Inn. 

Photo: Lucy Liu

Saturday morning

You’re booked in for a late lunch food tour, so a mid-morning brunch is your best bet. Try Antara 128 at the eastern end of the CBD or the ever popular Higher Ground if you’re closer to Southern Cross/Docklands.   

Saturday afternoon

Meet your tour guide in Bourke St Mall for your Melbourne Foodie Discovery Walk. You’ll sample savoury, sweet, food and drink over 3 hours all while exploring Melbourne’s laneways and arcades. You definitely won’t be hungry afterwards!  

Saturday night

Make sure your booking for dinner is late, as your food tour only finishes at 4.30pm. Perhaps some light style food, such as sashimi. For a budget-blowing showstopper, book in at Minamashima. You’ll need to jump on the 48 or 75 tram to Richmond for this one. For something in the CBD, try Kisume. If you’re a bit more adventurous, try Japanese/Italian fusion at Alt.  

For an after dark tipple there are more cocktail bars in Melbourne than you could possible try, but Black Kite Commune, Whitehart, Yarra Falls and Caretaker's Cottage all have distinctly different vibes and are all worth a visit.  

Queen Victoria Market

Sunday brunch 

Coffee, a pastry and a wonder around one of Melbourne’s markets is a fabulous way to spend Sunday morning. At Queen Vic Market (1.5km*) try Publique and at South Melb Market (2km*) try Agathe. If cheese is more your taste, try a toastie from Maker & Monger at Prahran Market (6km*). Expect a queue at all of these places. *Distances from Southern Cross Station.  

Roll away to the airport to take your flight home - at least you’ll be too full to eat the plane food! 

Top 5 Melbourne Laneways for Coffee

Melbourne: Home of the Coffee Snob

Melbourne is known as the home of the coffee snob – a badge many wear with pride! Melbourne sits on a half square mile rectangular grid of streets. In between these main streets, you’ll find about 200 laneways, many of which will house cafes! No wonder we have about 1000 places to get a coffee! The coffee culture is dominated by espresso mixed with milk. Think about the style of a caffe latte, or as Aussies prefer to call it - a flat white.

Of course, black coffee is widely available. If you want espresso straight up, ask for a short black. To dilute it in water, call it a long black. For a cup of American black coffee, ask for filter or ‘batchy’ (short for batch brew).

Many of the laneway cafes are tiny with just a few seats and most people electing to grab their coffee takeaway (to-go). Worried about consuming all those disposable cups? If you bring your own cup - such as the Melbourne made ‘Keep Cup’ – your barista will be happy to make it in that. Many cafes sell a version of the Keep Cup if you’d like to nice souvenir.

Degraves St

Melbourne’s most famous laneway (read: alleyway) is Degraves St and there’s certainly great quantity of places to get a coffee, but two are known as the choicest. Fieldwork Coffee is a wonderful example of the Melbourne coffee scene with just a few seats to sit and house roasted coffee. They call themselves a ‘modern Australian micro roastery’.

Rankins Lane

Melbourne’s laneways just off Little Bourke St really punch above their weight for world class coffee. Here in Rankins Lane, you’ll find two of the most famous.

Brother Baba Budan is probably Melbourne’s favourite laneway café. Opened ‘circa 2003’ by Seven Seeds coffee roasters it consistently serves some of the best ethically sourced coffees in Melbourne. The communal table in the front window is the best seat in town to soak up the sweet beats pumping through the stereo while you sip.

Head around the corner deep into Rankins Lane for Manchester Press. Here you’ll order coffee roasted by Ona coffee – another roaster that takes sustainability and ethics in coffee sourcing very seriously. Manchester Press is a great place to go if you’d like some food with your coffee.

Somerset Place

Also in the same Little Bourke St neighbourhood this laneway is a great place to find amazing coffee. Captains of Industry has been quietly tucked away up the rickety staircase on level 1 for years offering coffee, booze and haircuts. They probably won’t make a fuss about the coffee, but it will be roasted dark and roasted locally. And it’s a lovely quiet space to sit if you need some laptop time.

If you’re really up for some of the tastiest coffees in Melbourne, head to the end of this Melbourne laneway to Blue Doors. They use coffee roasted for them by Cartel Coffee Roasters in Geelong (1 hour down the highway). Cartel roast a blend for them for milk based coffee that is entirely unique. Exotic coffees are also a highlight here.

Crossley St

At the eastern end of town are some of the most enduring eating and drinking experiences in Melbourne – many of them Italian.

Pellegrini’s on Bourke St (corner Crossley St) is credited with introducing espresso to Melbourne in 1953. It’s been in the same family since 1974 and they bought it from the Pellegrini brothers themselves. The late owner, Sisto Malaspina, has a permanent memorial out the front. That’s how much Melbourne loves this place. Don’t come here expecting the best coffee in Melbourne. Come here for a piece of living history.

Around the corner is a tiny almost literal hole in the wall called Traveller. Like Brother Baba Budan, it’s also owned by Seven Seeds. Look for the neon sign of a shoe. A coffee from Pellegrini’s side-by-side with a coffee from Traveller tells you where Melbourne coffee has come from and where it’s going.

Equitable Place

This is another hectic laneway during the week as office workers descend upon this place during their lunchbreak. The tiny Two Conversations coffee is consistently good and also offers some healthy snacks. Head towards Little Collins St and just around the corner to Industry Beans. The minimalist, also clinical Modbar layout serves wonderful coffees including some modern additions for milk lovers such as Bubble Cup (a coffee drink mimicking bubble tea) and an iced latte with the additional if Australian native wattleseed.

Drinking decaf in Melbourne

Most cafes these days will have a decaf option, but if you’re looking for some of the best there are two clear standouts. The decaf at hugely popular organic coffee roaster Dukes, is hard to differentiate from the standard variety. It has complexity and body which is something many other decafs lack. We’d happily drink it with milk or without. You will probably need to stand in line along Flinders Lane with the rest of the crowd, but it’s worth it!

One of our favourites - mentioned above - is Industry Beans and their decaf is also top notch in flavour. The beans are decaffeinated using the ‘sugarcane process’ which utilises the enzymes from the sugarcane plant to leach the caffeine from the coffee beans. But if that is getting a bit technical - don’t worry too much. Just enjoy the coffee!

WANT TO DRINK THE BEST COFFEE IN MELBOURNE?

COME JOIN US!

Walk Melbourne Tours will help you get the best out of your stay in Melbourne. Our Coffee Lovers Walking Tour will take you to visit four coffee houses and cafés around Melbourne’s laneways, sample a selection of different coffee varieties, and uncover all the secrets of brewing the perfect coffee. Click Here for more info.

Coffee Lovers Walking Tour by Walk Melbourne

Winter treats in Melbourne for foodies (July 2023)

Melbourne’s winter is relatively mild, rarely dipping below 10 deg C (50 deg F) during the day. However, across the rest of sunny Australia, Melbourne has a reputation for being cold, wet and dark during July. While it can be tempting to snuggle up at home on the couch, winter is a great time to layer up in your favourite winter clothes and take advantage of all those warming and comforting delights you’re in the mood for. With multicultural culinary influences from Europe and Asia, here are some of the best winter things to eat and places to eat them in July 2023!  

Coffee & pastry

Melbourne is obsessed with two things in winter: Aussie Rules football (it’s not rugby or soccer) and coffee! The downtown grid - which is half a square mile (1.3 sq km) – has hundreds of coffee shops, with some of them very serious about their coffees. Most locals drink a caffe latte or a flat white (both are espresso topped with steamed milk) but if you really want a Melbourne coffee order a ‘magic’. It’s technically a ‘double ristretto ¾ latte’ but tastes just like a caffe latte with a more intense coffee flavour and less milk. One of the best is at Industry Beans in Little Collins Street. If you prefer your coffee black, they also offer filter coffee (high quality drip) or single origin black espresso. You might also like to try Maker on Hardware Lane, especially if you’re travelling with a non-coffee drinker. They make one of the best chai lattes.

What goes better with coffee than a pastry? Whether you like a classic croissant or something more elaborate like a cherry and pistachio danish or a lemon curd cronut, pastry is definitely having a moment in Melbourne. You can join the daily queue at world renowned Lune Croissanterie in Russell St or play hide and seek and find the petit shop for Agathe patisserie in the historic Royal Arcade.

Hot pot (Thai or Chinese)

There’s nothing quite as warming as sharing hot pot with friends. There’s something very comforting about communal cooking at the table over some nice conversation. This is not a dish to dine solo! Whether you like the spicy and numbing flavours of Sichuan province in China or the aromatic flavours of Thailand, Melbourne has many opportunities for hot pot.

The original in Melbourne and still very popular is Dainty Sichuan (no website) at 149 Lonsdale St. For Thai flavours and a menu that goes beyond hot pot as well, head to Nana Thai on Bourke near Russell. If the queue is too long, the eastern end of Bourke St (between Russell St and Spring St) has recently seen a burst of Thai restaurants, so try your luck at one of those!

Warming spaces for after dark drinks

After dinner it’s nice to slip into a moody bar for a sneaky cocktail. Winter is the best time to explore Melbourne’s indoor spaces designed to be warm and intimate.

When Gimlet became too popular, local hospitality hero Andrew McConnell decided to open a dedicated cocktail bar next door. The Apollo Inn is Melbourne’s newest hot spot, named for the original watering hole that was on this spot in the very early days of British settlement. It’s small, quiet and very sophisticated, specialising in martinis.

Boilermaker House has lots of timber, whisky and beer, but no windows. It could be anytime of day or night in here at anytime of day or night. Their menu of beer and whisky matchings are what their known for and what the bar is named for.   

Black Kite Commune is also a new kid in town serving more than 90% Australian made drinks with indigenous flavours highlighted on the snacks menu. Head upstairs into the mezzanine booths and simply press the button at your table for cocktail service. A perfect way to avoid the chill outside! 

Conclusion

Of course if you want to pack a whole lots of treats into 3 hours, you could join one of our Melbourne walking tours, where food and drinks are included on every tour. Melbourne is definitely a place that thrives during winter, so grab your puffer jacket and scarf and head out into see the city and warm up with some comforting winter treats.