Melbourne: A guide for your stomach

The good people of twitter have give me a list of places to eat in Melbourne as long as my arm (if I wrote in teensy weensy tiny scrawled letters), but unfortunately I will only be in town for 6 whole days and this man can only eat and drink so much.

So, I thought the best thing to do would be try to compile a list from all the emails, messages and scraps of paper I have been given, and get it down in one place. Please feel free to report back on anywhere that I fail to include in any subsequent write up (which will unfortunately be a lot). I trust these people with my appetite:

COFFEE:

- St Ali, South Melbourne – fabulous, and great breakfasts/lunch spot.

- MART: which is at the Middle Park tram stop. Cute place, can sit inside or out overlooking the gum trees. Great coffee, and breakfast/lunch.

- Grocery Bar: On Fitzroy St in St Kilda. A short stroll from the beach.

- Il Fornaio Bakery, near corner of Acland St and Fitzroy St – Italian bakery, but also do great pastas etc for lunch and breakfast/coffee is great. Doughnuts and almond croissants are amazing, but everything is good!

- All the best coffee spots are in the city centre, St Kilda, Albert Park or Fitzroy/Brunswick

- Sugar Dough bakery if you are in Brunswick – great pies, cakes and coffee

- City Centre: Postal Café, Journal, Il Solito Posto, the places on Degraves Street

- Seven Seeds (106 Berkeley St, Carlton)

- Proud Mary (172 Oxford Street, Collingwood)

- Atomica in Fitzroy (268 Brunswick St, Fitzroy VIC 3065)

AREA GUIDE:

City Centre:

- DeGraves street – quintessential Melbourne laneway with lots of shops and coffee shops/sandwich shops. A must do. Jungle Juice is great for coffee and fab sandwiches.

- Melbourne Supper Club – a bit expensive, but very Melbourne Wine bar. Old school.

- The European and The Melbourne Wine bar are all virtually next door to the Melbourne Supper club.

- Izakaya Den is an amazing Japanese place in the city which is getting fab reviews

- Syracuse – Greek influenced meditteranean food. Quintessential Melbourne.

- Shopping at the GPO, funky small shopping centre of the Burke St Mall.

- Double Happiness is a tiny bar. All Melbourne’s best bars are tucked down alleyways. The Gin Palace is another good one – quieter, businessy crowd.

- Longrain has great Thai food – not cheap but good

- Movida, fun for wine and tapas. Very Melbourne place also.

- Matteo's Restaurant, Brunswick street -

- Vue de Monde for the tasting menu but if you can’t do that at least visit the café and get a Cookie du Jour – they use Amedei chocolate and it’s a steal at $2.50.

- POP, Hardware Lane

- Flower Drum, Market Lane - Top notch Cantonese food

Carlton:

- Gerald's Bar (386 Rathdown St, North Carlton)

St Kilda:

- Grocery Bar or Il Fornaio for coffee – Fitzroy St

- Cicciolina’s is one of my fav restaurants. Very casual, but great quality Italian food and wine. It’s on Acland St, but not touristy.

- Stokehouse, Jacka Blvd

South Melbourne:

- St Ali, Dead Man Espresso, Gas – for coffee (and Gas also do good tapas style lunch)

- South Melbourne market – for food and dim sims! – short tram ride either to City centre or the beach.

Albert Park:

- Kamel, Victoria Ave: Coffee and breakfast at Egyptian style place

- Misuzu’s, Victoria Ave: Japanese food, really cute place and lovely food

- Andrews Burgers – trad’l Aussie burgers. Mmmmm, buy and walk down to beach to eat it!

- MART for breakfast – Middle Park

Fitzroy/Collingwood:

- Panama Dining Room, South Street

- Cutler and Co (55 Gertrude Street)

- Farmers Market at Abbotsford Convent, Saturday

Southbank:

- Rockpool - Steak house on the corner of the Crown casino but meant to be good.

South Yarra:

- Brioche: For good bread

Ripponlea:

- Attica - Go for the tasting menu. Really interesting and excellent quality food. Nice staff too.

- Best breakfast ever from Las Chicas just next to Balaclava Station. Good coffee up the road at Batch

SWEET STUFF

- Doughnut vans at Vic market and Footscray pretty traditionally Aussie and worth trying

- Lindt café for macarons. (also try from the chocolate shop in St Kilda and from Café Vue.)

- If you’re in the CBD and looking for hot chocolate I’m told you should go to Chokolait rather than Koko Black.

- Best chocolate shop is Monsieur Truffe on Smith St in Collingwood. Actual chocolates (bon bons) - and good hot chocolate – are best from Ganache in Toorak (off Chapel) near South Yarra train station (same road – walk towards Chapel Street).

- Brunetti's, Lygon street - Cakes galore.

Big thanks go to Carly and Jen (UK based Aussies), SJF (Melbourne blogger), Amy and Pauline (buddies), and Nadia (auntie) for all their help. All the information has been provided by the most knowledgeable Melburnians I know and I am currently doing my best to visit (and report back) on as many as I can.