Hot in the city: Why Melbourne’s CBD is still the GOAT for dining

In the latest Age Good Food Guide, city restaurants scooped up seven of 17 awards, including Restaurant (Yiaga), New Restaurant (Roma), Bar (Three Horses) and Cafe of the Year (Cham), and a total of 49 hats. It’s a different story to the 2023 Guide, when 41 city restaurants picked up hats.

In the past 15 months alone, the restaurateur behind big-city hits including Gimlet and Supernormal, Andrew McConnell, revived the former Becco site on Crossley Street, to open Cote Basque. Hole-in-the-wall spot Super Taco opened opposite, and Shannon Martinez launched a city branch of her Collingwood cafe Smith and Deli. The owners of celebrated Caretaker’s Cottage bar also chose another Little Lonsdale Street site for their follow-up, Three Horses.

Hospitality now constitutes 49 per cent of all retail tenancies in Melbourne CBD, as the city’s recovery after the pandemic morphs into a redefinition of how and when Melburnians use their city. In 2024, that figure was 40 per cent.

“It’s that shift from Melbourne being a five day a week city to a 24/7 CBD,” says James Lockwood, director of retail leasing at Fitzroys real estate.

Joshua Brisbane, co-owner of a suite of city venues including the European and French Saloon, agrees. “People are going out at night, there are more restaurants in town opening and the city nightlife is positive, definitely.” But he adds that during the day, trade is down, and the city feels quieter.

“There’s a theatre to being in the city.”

Claudia Christopoulos, Roma restaurant

Lockwood says the boom in sporting events, functions and cultural activities has transformed city spending habits, with a “weekend and night-time economy” driven by a more diverse mix of consumers replacing the office worker spending that city businesses once relied on.

Lockwood says all sectors of hospitality, from cafes to fast-casual dining, are driving demand for city real estate. Latest data from Fitzroys shows retail vacancies dropped for a fourth consecutive year to 4.6 per cent. In 2023, the rate was around three times higher.

Roma, nestled behind greenery in the forecourt of a Collins Street office tower, was named New Restaurant of the Year at The Age Good Food Guide Awards on Monday, October 12. Prolific restaurateur Con Christopoulos and a team of collaborators developed the concept of an all-day Roman restaurant hand in hand with the location.

“The idea of Rome lends to this buzzy place like Melbourne city, where you’re going to have a long lunch and then a passeggiata [a stroll] afterwards,” says Claudia Christopoulos, Con’s daughter who worked alongside him on Roma. “There’s a theatre to being in the city.”

Hidden from street view despite being on a busy corner, Roma might be the 2026 version of a restaurant tucked down a Melbourne laneway. It’s been one of the hardest tables to book since it opened in May.

“The reason Roma has been so successful is because it is an experience,” says Claudia. “It’s not enough to just cook a good meal. Fine dining with fun, design without pretentiousness, quality with an attitude – people are drawn to that.”

Martinez of Smith and Deli agrees. “I think Melburnians are missing the city they used to know,” she says, having recently opened a business on Degraves Street. “Amazing venues are moving in and really bringing the lane back to life. It’s such an iconic part of the CBD, we love to see it thriving once again.”

As the Monday-to-Friday office week died out post-2020, restaurants spotted opportunity in the suburbs. Joshua Brisbane saw an outflow of city concepts and businesses in those years. “But setting up in the suburbs is a way higher hospitality gamble,” he adds.

The owner of Korean restaurants Sagye (named the Guide’s Critics’ Pick of the Year this week) and Ondo has traded in both the city and Armadale, but is now focused on the city.

“While operating in the CBD comes with higher rent and greater commercial risks, it also brings together a remarkably diverse crowd,” says Levi Eun.

Four more takeaways from a year in dining

As The Age Good Food Guide editors, we’ve spent the past 12 months eating at casual Mexican joints, exclusive sushi counters and homey high street restaurants in country towns, travelling to Carnegie for Japanese char-grilled meat and Carlton North for Italian excellence. Here are four more trends of 2026 we’ve noticed.

Bang for buck

It might bore you into a spell-protected slumber, but the fact is this: cost of living continues to vex us. In 2026, we saw restaurants meet the issue with radical price transparency. Some, like 7 Alfred, wore the price tag of its steak frites like a badge of honour, an A-frame out the front of the CBD restaurant informing passersby that, if you have $48, you can come inside for steak and chips.

Others promised all-out bargains in dressy spaces. City newcomer Frenchie debuted earlier this year with $14 everything: martinis, steaks, trout carpaccio, iles flottantes. Entrecote’s sister venue Gigi in Prahran followed suit, going two better with a $12 menu. Of course, you’re not getting a 1.5-kilogram tomahawk steak at either, but, in the age of crippling sticker shock, knowing how much it costs to leave the house is hugely reassuring.

Third culture everything

Berbere-spiced chicken sandwiches at Ageyo. Skin-contact wines from north-west China at Moondrop. Seared kangaroo tartare that eats like larb at Joe Taylor. An exciting cadre of restaurants, bars and cafes are putting their stamp on Melbourne dining by interlacing influences from the cultures that have shaped them. Family recipes, classical culinary training, and a contemporary sensibility (as well as using wonderful Aussie produce): the confluence of all these is known as third culture cuisine.

With deeper foundations than fusion food, you can spot it at Vietnamese Australian cafe Cham, serving breakfast buns filled with sticky-salty nem nuong sausage. At Little Rose, Sichuan-spiced fish meuniere is cooking. And at Zareh, lamb flatbreads with bone marrow nod to Armenia, Lebanon and St John restaurant in London.

A broader list of hats

This year’s Guide awarded hats for the first time to 11 restaurants in locations from Rosebud to Bright, serving everything from Japanese-style charcoal chicken to Korean set menus. It continues a widening of the perception of a “hatted” experience, with the Guide’s editors seeking out excellence of all kinds. Regional Victoria also featured strongly, represented by 12 two-hat and 29 one-hat restaurants, in addition to three-hatted Brae. There were four new hats outside Melbourne, too, pointing to a strong future for our already enviable regional dining scene.

St Kilda has lift-off
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before, but is St Kilda … back? Last year’s Good Food Guide Bar of the Year The Walrus continues plying the neighbourhood with oysters and pintxos and interesting wines, while its sibling pub The Carpenter’s Ruin runs compelling deals most days of the week. Over on Blessington Street, Yang Thai remixes charcoal chicken using Thai flavours. But it’s what’s up next that’s got the Secret Life of Us set carrying on.

Hospitality impresario Andrew McConnell took over one of Australia’s most storied addresses in Stokehouse earlier this month, promising to reinvigorate both upstairs and downstairs. And after a divine summer pop-up at Stokehouse’s Beach Box Kiosk, rising star Ellie Bouhadana has taken the old Claypots site, promising “Moroccan-style kebabs and whole fish with cumin and garlic” at her eagerly awaited debut restaurant Dafina Seaside Grill. St Kilda is back; your move, Docklands.

The 46th Age Good Food Guide reviews are available via the Good Food app, which is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here. Click here for more Good Food Guide stories.