Melbourne & Surroundings: Penguins, the Puffing Billy, Great Ocean Road & Mungo National Park

Foodie tour

You should allow plenty of time for wandering the neighborhoods and laneways and simply exploring during your time in Melbourne. An organized food tour can be one way to bring a bit more structure to your exploration and ensure that you find some gems of restaurants with the limited time you have. If your food tour starts in Chinatown, this is the perfect activity to pair with tickets to a musical theater production in the nearby theater district (if the timing aligns).

Immigration Museum

Located in the Old Customs House, this museum explores the historical trends that have contributed to the multicultural society of today’s Australia. Afterward, enjoy the modern architecture and waterfront views of the nearby Docklands neighborhood.

Old Melbourne Gaol

Step inside this Victorian-era prison building (complete with cells you can enter and the original gallows) and learn the stories of some of Australia’s most notorious criminals. For an especially bone-chilling glimpse into the site’s gruesome past, book tickets for the “Ghosts? What Ghosts?” tour or the Hangman’s Night Tour.

St. Kilda

This neighborhood, located on the water south of the city center, is known for hip indie restaurants and shops, and is home to the city’s Pride March, as well as several arts-related festivals. Head here for funky coffee shops during the day or a vibrant nightlife after dark. If you’re walking down from the city center (which locals call the CBD, or central business district), stop into the Royal Botanic Gardens to enjoy the green space and rare plant specimens.

Brighton Beach bathing boxes

These beach shacks painted in cheerful colors are a local institution. They are privately owned, often passed down within families—and when one goes up for sale, the high price usually makes headlines (such as one recent sale for $450,000). Originally built as changing rooms, the bathing boxes ensure front-row seats (with shade) at the beach. Visitors to the beach can usually get a glimpse inside at least a handful of the huts to see how the current owners use them—from storage sheds for watersports equipment to gathering spaces decked out for a party (inasmuch as that’s possible without running water or electricity).

Seamstress

This historic building has seen many uses over the years—among them a brothel and a Buddhist monastery. The name and the decor of the current occupant, a restaurant, pay homage to its time as a textile factory. The restaurant’s Asian fusion menu is excellent, but the real standouts are the craft cocktails with distinctive ingredients such as chili liqueur and Japanese plum wine.

Cookie

This Asian fusion restaurant with a Thai foundation attracts a see-and-be-seen crowd, but it’s not all about appearances—the food is actually delicious. Come hungry, as you won’t want to miss a single course—from dumplings and glass noodles to roti and curries of various kinds, onward to spare ribs and barramundi wrapped in a banana leaf, and finally desserts such as banana fritters and a lychee pancake with coconut ice cream.

Muli Express

Drop by this unassuming oyster bar for the catch of the day. The freshest local oysters are always on offer, along with specialties including congee and sea urchin—and even oyster ice cream! This isn’t so much a sit-and-eat place as a standing-room-only spot to down a delicious seafood snack on the way to your next delicious course.

Shandong MaMa

You might not expect much from this restaurant, given its location inside an arcade, but judge the quality of the food based on how busy it is (consistently packed from wall to wall). Try an assortment of the dumplings they’re known for—some with characteristic fillings typical of China’s Shandong Province, others with local Australian specialties.

Tonka

Tucked away off Flinders Lane, one of Melbourne’s most iconic laneways, is this Indian-inspired restaurant run by the same team behind Coda, a French-Vietnamese fusion restaurant that is a Melbourne institution (and also worth trying). The menu features local Australian ingredients prepared with Indian-inspired flavors and techniques.

Hardware Lane

A popular spot among locals and tourists alike, this lane is lined with restaurants, from Mexican and Argentinian to Israeli and Vietnamese.

Piccolina

Follow your Hardware Lane dinner with gelato at Piccolina, where you can find classic flavors as well as those made from local ingredients such as wattleseed (described as having notes of coffee, chocolate, and hazelnut). The gelateria has several other locations and is worth seeking out.

Sister of Soul

The St. Kilda neighborhood has no shortage of excellent restaurants (spanning Italian to Japanese and beyond), but this plant-based restaurant is a true standout. Vegetarians will thrill at a flavor-packed menu that caters to them. With breakfast, dinner, and cocktail menus all bursting with appealing offerings, one visit might not be enough.

Berlin Bar

Choose between West Berlin and East Berlin when you arrive at this history-themed hotspot tucked away with a nondescript sign on an upper floor in the city center. If you select East, you’ll be seated on minimalist furnishings among kitschy Soviet artifacts. There’s more glitz and glam on the western side, but both sides have access to the same innovative and irreverent cocktail menu.

Fifth Province

Irish bars might be a dime a dozen in any sizable city, but not many can boast that they attract a true Irish clientele. Whether it’s live music, the food and drink menu, or the sense of community, this St. Kilda spot gets a thumbs up from the expat clientele it’s meant to represent, and lives up to its name as an unofficial “fifth province” to supplement the four that make up Ireland itself.