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Coffee lovers unite. Undercover Roasters have opened their HQ cafe and store in Abbotsford and it is all time. The wholesale business has stuck through the pandemic to open their flagship, so you can now enjoy their signature coffee with a stack of brunch and breakfast options.  

From pop-up to permanent, Portsea’s Blakeaway is here to stay. This family owned and run store comes from the team behind Blakes Feast, a boutique catering company serving up pre-prepared bespoke menus with seasonal ingredients. They specialise in events, but now with Blakeaway, you can pick up your very own treats to enjoy, special occasion or not.

Once upon a time, Arc’teryx was exclusively reserved for the weekend warriors and outdoors type as a top-end brand that would help one attack the elements. In more recent times, however, the brand has been adopted by the global streetwear community thanks to the versatility of the garms and Veilance, their fashion-forward sibling label—and now, you can find both under one roof at their new flagship Chadstone locale. 

Is it Italian? Is it Mexican? It’s Chachos. Packed full of flavour and fun, the team at Chachos are bringing their take on classic Italian and Mexican food to Chapel Street. Combining the best of both worlds, they’re serving traditional, crispy pizza bases topped with punchy combos to get those taste buds singing. 

Your belly will thank you after a visit to East Brunswick’s latest takeaway opening. East Rusty’s Sandwich Parlour is the new establishment from Phil Gijsbers and Rob McKenzie following the success of their Green Acre Pizza Bar. The new takeaway joint follows a similar ethos to its pizza bar sister site—quality food, great flavours, and sustainability at the core of the business. 

Head Honcho is backed by a team of ambitious hospitality young guns James ‘Chooka’ Pettenon and Fintan Redmon. These guys are putting the humble toasted sandwich front and centre, with the gooey three-cheese ‘Greenhorn’ toastie taking centre stage—we’re talking Swiss Gruyere, Mozzarella and Cheddar oozing out the sides.

Crooked Letters quickly became a southside institute when they set up shop in their Murray Street corner store several years back; the locale was quintessentially Melbourne, as were the bagels. 

Backed by an all-star lineup, including the founder of Rustica, Hobsons Bay Hotel opens its doors just in time for summer. Brenton Lang—with partners Drew Gibbs and Matt Cook—have completely revamped the 100 year-old Williamstown pub with a new look, team and rooftop deck, perfect for the summer holidays.

Step back in time at restaurateur Scott Pickett’s newest venture, Chancery Lane. The 100-seat bistro oozes charm with its antique-inspired interiors and classic European menu, set inside the historic walls of the Normanby Chambers building. Think luxurious gold and brass fittings, dark timber, checkerboard tiles, and hand-crafted finishing touches—classic European sophistication. 

We love a wine down here in Melbourne, and we also love a yarn. So we think you’re going to love the new Glou wine store opening on Smith Street. The team behind Glou are building a community around sustainability and awareness in the wine industry with their part shop, part tasting bar. You can pop in for a chat and a sample, before stocking up on your favourite sustainable drops. 

Just by the entrance to the new East Brunswick Village centre, you’ll find the latest northside cafe to open their doors—Bellboy. The fitting name is just the tip of the iceberg for why you’ll love this new brunch spot. They’re pet and cyclist-friendly with abundant al fresco space, and they make their own breads from scratch. House-made sourdough crumpets anyone?

Say hello to the newest kid on the block in Fitzroy: Masti. This Indian hangout is part restaurant, part cocktail bar, serving up an array of reimagined street food classics. With the successful Eastern Spice restaurant in Geelong behind her, head chef and owner Manpreet Sekhon is here to bring her signature flavours to the big smoke.

In true Italian style, this new Richmond eatery is a no-fuss venue where traditional food and the art of hosting collide. The two owners, Nicola and Osvaldo, are both culinary veterans from Northern Italy so you know you’re getting genuine Italian food here.

A new joint project between the owners of Hop Nation Brewing Co. and Yarrville's Navi has just popped up in West Footscray.

After a few rumours, a little hearsay around the hospo traps and plenty of crossed fingers, Three Blue Ducks has dropped the news that they’ll be opening their first southern state restaurant at Tullamarine wave park, URBNSURF.

Gingerboy’s Teague Ezard has teamed up with several heavyweights to bring the Mornington Peninsula the Ocean Beach Pavilion, a casual restaurant and bar bringing south-east Asian flavours down to the ‘Ninch.

We don’t know when overseas travel will be an option again, but we do know that authentic food is one of the best ways to spark a little wanderlust. Enter Gatboy, bringing authentic Korean street food flavours to Russell Street in the CBD. 

Reminiscent of a 70s style bar, Gum is Collingwood’s latest boozy haunt. Located on Johnson Street, the ‘tiny bar’ is a considered mix of eatery, pub and good times.

The old saying goes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That’s definitely not the case when it comes to Elsternwick’s Smoke & Pickles.

Just a few months back, the idea of having a beer with your mates in the sunshine seemed about as unlikely as leaving the house without a mask. While there’s no movement on the latter just yet, Melburnians can crack a cold one with their mates this summer in a prime outdoor locale called Pontoon Park, courtesy of The Stokehouse Precinct.

With summer fast approaching, and life returning to a level of normalcy, we all owe ourselves a good time. The iconic Prince Hotel in St Kilda has just launched its pop-up Rooftop Beer Garden, and it looks incredible. 

The only good thing that’s Melbourne’s lengthy lockdown has left us is several ghost kitchens continuing to trade without a brick and mortar locale. The latest to arrive via plenty of Instagram hype is Oru Bake, an account slinging a grip of loosely Japanese desserts which epitomise the age-old ‘looks too good to eat’ truism.

Over the past decade, Richmond’s Swan Street has become its own culinary mecca with a full spectrum of breakfast, lunch and dinner options, and now, the transformed stretch welcomes a healthy new addition that’s primed for the summer ahead, Fishbowl.

When that hunger hits, nothing quite hits the spot like some no-fuss hot chippies, a big ol’ fried chicken burger or a bucket of wings. The all-female identifying team at Preston’s Fried Hustle have hit the nail on the head with that formula, offering up a bevy of salty goodness and accompanying treats.

The humble sanga is making waves in Carnegie, with Saul’s Sandwiches opening its doors on Neerim Road. This sandwich bar is the brainchild of the team behind Bentleigh cafe Time and Place, and after just a week of trade and hype, they’re selling out almost daily.

After several months of operating around the limitations of a global pandemic, Nico’s Sandwich Deli is relocating from its city locale to a pop-up in Fitzroy, for a good time, and maybe a long time.

St Kilda, it’s time to reintroduce yourself to that space below The Prince Hotel, now affectionately known as Little Prince Wine. The St Kilda stalwart is set to add another venue to their already impressive lineup with this charming Euro-inspired wine bar. 

Collingwood just scored a very Collingwood late-night pizza joint called Thin Slizzy, courtesy of Scott Penberthy, a veteran of the Melbourne pizza scene who’s spent the last five years slinging slices at northside institute Rita’s.

After Dinner by Heston shut its doors at the beginning of Melbourne’s lockdown, chef Gareth and his partner, Cat, had a lot of time on their hands. Gareth joined the many Melburnians baking their way through isolation, but he and Cat couldn’t eat all the tarts on their own. And so Tarts Anon was born. The business is their side-hustle, but with over 3k followers on Instagram already, these humble desserts are gaining traction. 

Once upon a time, one would be hard-pressed to find a restaurant worth travelling to past the north border of Fitzroy. Times be changing, though, with outer suburbs becoming their own culinary mecca; up next is Reservoir with the recently opened La Pinta. 

Just a decade ago, you’d find most hospitality venues that are worth visiting within the CBD and inner suburbs. Fast forward a few years and several culinary hotspots have popped up in relatively unassuming suburbs—just take Moonee Ponds and Glen Waverley for example—and now, it’s Greensborough’s turn. The suburb’s latest addition is Dulce Gelateria, offering up 80 primo flavours a week, with many of them vegan.

The residents of Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street and surrounds quickly became accustomed to picking up their baked goods from the temporary Marion Grocer. Realising it had quickly become a fixture of the cherished culinary strip, restaurateur Andrew McConnell has decided to relocate his grocery, now known as Morning Market, to a permanent locale two doors down.

The people of Melbourne’s hospitality scene have been busy during lockdown. We’ve seen some wild creations come out of the woodwork, like an entire mudcrab wrapped in pastry, a bacon and egg donut and a 3kg cookie dough cake. Sometimes, however, you can’t beat a classic, and that’s where Pav Queen comes in.

After a long, cold winter, Melbourne is finally scoring some good news. Public gatherings of up to five, forecasts exceeding well above the 10° mark and daylight savings arriving—those lucky enough to live within 5km of the St Kilda foreshore can tie all of the above together with a feed from the just-reopend Paper Fish.

Smashing down a bowl, or tin tray of pasta, from Good Gnocchi is sort of like a rite of passage if you live in Melbourne’s North. And now, they’re inching ever so slightly towards Melbourne’s centre with a second takeaway-only location in Abbotsford, letting Collingwood, Richmond and surrounds into the club.

The self-proclaimed “morning-artisans”, Beggs & Acon in Prahan is the latest limited-run culinary venture to come out of COVID. As you’ve probably worked out, their focus is bacon & eggs, of which they do four—and only four—iterations of the classic breakfast meal.

It's fair to say Robert and Irene Magdziarz know a thing or two about good wine. After hand-planting their first vineyard in the Macedon Ranges, they moved to Coldstream and took over the old Warramunda Station in 2007, turning it into one of the Yarra Valley’s finest biodynamic wineries, Warramunda Estate.

Melbourne's independent beer scene has shown little signs of slowing down over the past decade. New breweries continue to pop up all over town, and we're very much into that.

Mile End Bagels quickly reached institute status when it opened its doors to the warehouse locale in Fitzroy back in 2016, and now, they’re making tracks further north with a second location in Brunswick, down an industrial side-street, behind a roller door. 

Given the calibre of offerings at Melbourne Central’s new foodie precinct, ELLA, we can only assume there’s a fairly comprehensive vetting process in being able to open up shop. One such newcomer to this culinary hub, NUTTEA, has clearly passed with flying colours, slinging their unique range of 100% vegan, nut-based bubble teas.

Thanks to lockdown, Melbourne has been treated to an influx of delivery-only, niche ghost kitchens who do just several things really bloody well. The latest is Toma, an Asian-style bakery delivering sweet and savoury treats.

We've seen an array of amazing International cuisine hit the already stacked streets of Melbourne during 2020, and tamales is another that you need to get acquainted with.

Can a business be a pillar of the community? If so, there's no better example than Edithvale General Store.

Carlton North lost one of the good one when hole-in-the-wall cafe Bü shut up shop at 2019’s end. Ever since locals have been waiting for something to fill the void, and after nine months, Canning Street and surrounds welcomes Monforte Viennoiserie to the charming corner store locale.

If you’re planning to win over Melbourne’s discerning tea fans, you’re going to need a brew that looks as beautiful as it tastes. Malaysia’s Instea has nailed that formula, and are coming in hot—or ice-cold—with a brick and mortar store opening on Swanston Street.

No, Tom Selleck is not making these pastry-encrusted beauties, but the chef behind Magnum Pi, Jason Kubasek, would undoubtedly do a better job when you consider his cheffing credentials—Pillar of Salt, Good Times Milk Bar and High Society to name a few.

Sometimes, the simple act of gifting others—or yourself—a bouquet of flowers is all that’s needed to brighten one’s day. There is a little more to it than just bunching a couple of flowers together, however, and that’s where Prairies comes in.

It’s time to put your money where your mouth is and bag yourself some of the best cookies found in Australia. After causing a little hysteria when opening along Chapel Street earlier this year, Cookie Box is coming in hot with a second store in Hawthorn.

Riviera Rd in Avondale Heights is an entirely unremarkable street, except for one tiny thing. It’s home to Melbourne’s only dedicated cannoli bar.

At least once and a while, a good coffee paired with some classically refined cafe fare is the cure that ails you, and if you’re in Albert Park or surrounds, that’s what you’ll get from Dundas & Faussett.

In every Melbourne suburb, you’ll find at least one cult burger joint that all the locals will point to. If bayside suburb, Sandringham, was ever lacking in that department, it certainly isn’t now. 3191ers have Burger Bae to thank for that—a burger joint with an impeccable name and even better patties.

With the pubs closed right now, it's fair to say there are a lot of Melburnians craving a good old-fashioned parma.

Like most Melbourne businesses, Penny For Pound has had to pivot due to the pandemic. And pivot they have with a range of baked delights for you to enjoy at home. Pick up a box of their bake-at-home croissants and you'll be a happy camper.

There are several ways to make yourself known in Melbourne’s hospo industry. Some basic marketing is the first step, a decent menu will help word-of-mouth spread naturally, and a ballsy business name will certainly put you ahead of the pack. Say g’day to A Dingo Ate My Taco.

Opening a restaurant during a pandemic is less than ideal, but for The Hot Bird team, they've made the best of a bad situation.

Good things come in small packages at Pie Thief. We’re referring to both the tiny, golden bundles of joy—pies—and the fact that Pie Thief venue is quite small. 

It’s hard not to love cookies, but some love them so much that their passion for baking those sweet, round treats has turned into a full-time gig. Case and point, The Cookie Dough Co.

Laantaan is an online bakery that had only been around for six months when the pandemic hit. But while some businesses have struggled understandably, Laantaan has gone from strength to strength since they opened themselves up to online ordering.

Sometimes, you just want a no-frills number one shave on your dome-piece. Other times, you want a detached quiff to skin-fade. With a strict “everyone welcome” policy, a trim with the barbers at Yours Truly should be considered.

Carlton has always been a great place to escape the bustling noise of the CBD, and MOFO Burgers has arrived to give you another reason to visit the 3053 (post lockdown, of course). The new cheat meal destination was launched last May 2020 and is located strategically at 100 Leicester Street, Kwong Lee building of The University of Melbourne.