Why Melbourne restaurants are the best in Australia

Close your eyes. Think about Melbourne. Think about its leafy streets, its wrought iron awnings, its glowing storefronts. Think of eating in a restaurant, perhaps in a cobblestone laneway, or looking out the windows from one of those storefronts. The waiters might know your name, know your family, know your drink order. You know exactly where you are.

Now. Imagine the same scenario in Sydney. What are you looking at? Perhaps you’re at Icebergs, watching the sun set over Bondi Beach. That, my friend, is cheating. If you see the Sydney Opera House or the Harbour Bridge in your imagination, it is those iconic structures that make you think about Sydney, not the restaurant you’re in.

Let’s face it: In many of Sydney’s best restaurants, there is very little to let on where you are. The menu might give you some hints. Maybe. But otherwise? You could be anywhere.

My point is this: Melbourne restaurants have a sense of place. The restaurants themselves are so thoroughly woven into the fabric of the city, and of our lives here, that you can’t imagine Melbourne without its restaurants, and those restaurants could not exist anywhere else. To me, a hugely important factor in any great dining city is that there’s such a well-defined sense of place, you couldn’t be anywhere else in the world.

A few years ago, when my job was to write about Australian food and restaurants as a national critic, I tried to get to Sydney at least once every month or two. During those visits, I ate incredibly well. There are individual Sydney restaurants that I would love to have in Melbourne, and I would lose if I tried to argue that some of the country’s best cooking isn’t happening there. But I struggled to get a hold on the dining personality of Sydney overall. Was it just flashy? Over the top? I mean, that’s fun, but it’s hardly unique.

Spend two days eating in Melbourne, and you’ll know the culinary personality of this city inherently. We are wine-obsessed, we are internationally influenced, we trade in a kind of casual excellence seen only in the world’s best dining cities. Spend an evening eating and drinking at Gerald’s Bar, at the Carlton Wine Room, on the street outside Grossi. Stop in for a bowl of amatriciana at Mario’s, go eat falling-apart lamb shoulder in the grand Victorian dining room at Epocha. Where are you? You know exactly where you are.

We trade in a kind of casual excellence seen only in the world’s best dining cities.

That sense of place is not exclusive to old standbys and more established venues. The tradition that Melbourne has had for almost a century, of extremely good, extremely casual dining that flows from polished-floored dining rooms out onto the footpaths (and therefore into the city itself) is thriving in newer establishments, too. Check out Bahama Gold in Brunswick East, or Bar Bellamy in Carlton, to see how that quality is thriving and evolving.

Last year, when I ate at Kiln, which won The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide’s most recent new restaurant of the year award, I thought: This restaurant is great. It feels like L.A. Other places feel like Vegas. Like London.

There was a time when Sydney thoroughly kicked Melbourne’s arse when it came to Thai food, but that’s no longer the case. In recent years, our Thai (and Korean) options have exploded (take Soi 38 for instance) and we’re all the more delicious for it. Sydney used to have a more interesting sandwich scene than we do, but no longer.

At the same time, the things we’ve always done better than Sydney have not crept north. Our pubs are fantastic – two of the best meals I’ve had in the last few weeks have been unplanned affordable plates I grabbed while sitting at a neighbourhood pub (shout out in particular to the lamb shank over risotto at The Standard in Fitzroy).

I’d argue that we have some of the best Italian food anywhere in the world outside of Italy, and it’s only getting better (go try the tajarin with rabbit ragu at Alta Trattoria for proof).

Sydney’s best pasta joints are very good, but they also could be any neighbourhood gem in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. In Sydney, they’re noteworthy. In Melbourne, they’d be expected.

When it comes to the finest fine dining, Sydney likely has more options, and those options boast more dramatic views. But, once again, I find Melbourne’s fine diners truer to Australia and Victoria than Sydney bothers to manage.

Is there a restaurant more of-its-place than Attica? Is there any reason most of Sydney’s highest-rated places couldn’t be plucked from anywhere in the world?

My favourite Sydney restaurant of all time, Momofuku Seiobo, was a Caribbean restaurant in the back hallway of a casino. Many of the ingredients were Australian, and the service had that fantastic friendly professionalism at which Australian hospo excels. But it could have been in Dubai, in New York, almost anywhere.

Sydney wins on the weather front, obviously. They can have it. I’ll take Melbourne, and its cold wet nights, because I know there are thousands of pubs waiting to warm me up and feed me well. Hundreds of Greek and Lebanese restaurants that will treat me like family. Dozens and dozens of places that feel like home, that exude excellence, and that could only ever have come about in the magical melting pot that is Melbourne.

Besha Rodell is the anonymous chief restaurant critic for The Age