With tennis fans’ eyes on Melbourne right now for the Australian Open, here’s what to do in the city if you’re visiting for sport, leisure or pleasure.
Long seen as Australia’s second city, Melbourne is runner-up no more after officially edging past Sydney in population for the first time in more than a century. But if Sydney is the extroverted showboat full of grand gestures (opera house! beaches!), arts- and food-loving Melbourne plays it cool.
Visitors will discover odd and wonderful surprises, sometimes hidden in the laneways (what Aussies call alleys), including spaces like a church caretaker’s cottage turned cocktail bar or a limestone art gallery tucked amid rustling gum trees. Get swept up in the city’s tennis obsession at the Australian Open in January, as well as its coffee addiction: Knowing the lingo — like the difference between a magic (a smaller, stronger flat white) and a long black (double espresso poured over hot water) — is just one way to get a dose of Melbourne’s leisure-loving culture.
ITINERARY
Friday
8pm | Eat spicy papaya salad
Soi 38, a northeastern Thai restaurant in a parking garage off Bourke Street, is no longer a secret, but lining up (unavoidable after 5pm) for the hidden space still feels like pure discovery. Inside, perch on a stool and dig into fiery papaya salads, grilled meats and hot pots (dishes start at AU$15, about $16.). Opposite is La Cave Garage, a tiny wine shop in a former parking attendant’s booth; pop open one of its bottles with your meal.
The street has welcomed a wave of Thai restaurants, including Thai Baan, which features a flashing LED Ferris wheel on the wall. Order the Ayuttaya boat noodles, in an earthy broth, and sai oua, grilled sausage with turmeric and herbs (both AU$14.90).
10pm | Find hidden nightlife
Melbourne’s city centre was a ghost town at night until a relaxation of liquor licensing in the 1990s brought new life to the laneways. One standout, Caretaker’s Cottage, a cocktail bar inside a church caretaker’s former home, could rest on its novelty but doesn’t. The staff welcomes you warmly, and the sound system is sublime. Try the clarified milk punch (the milk is filtered out, leaving a clear drink with a silky texture), which changes monthly — pavlova-flavored vodka appeared in one recent variation (all cocktails AU$25).
Five minutes away, the new One or Two, a futuristic cocktail and whiskey den, delights with details like a tiny orange-peel garnish in the shape of a cat’s face. Soak up the booze at Stalactites, a family-run Greek institution that keeps the gyro spit rotating until 2am.
Saturday
8am | See rare cactuses
Start with a flat white (AU$5) and a pastry at Cathedral Coffee, a cafe in an art deco arcade on the ground floor of the 1926 Nicholas Building, commissioned by a pharmaceutical company and now a vertical hive of creative shops and artist studios. Once you’re caffeinated, stroll 40 minutes south across the Yarra River (or take a tram down St. Kilda Road) to the 94-acre Royal Botanic Gardens. The newest addition, the Arid Garden, displays around 3,000 cactuses and succulents, a collection that includes many rare and odd-looking species. Then flop down on the north-facing grassy slope for a city view, or grab some shade under a Moreton Bay fig tree, a banyan with sprawling roots that’s native to Australia’s east coast. Entry is free.
10am | Admire robotic dog art
Robotic dogs are on the loose at the National Gallery of Victoria: As part of the NGV Triennial 2023, Polish-born artist Agnieszka Pilat has programmed three Boston Dynamics-made dogs to paint artworks, some collaboratively. You can also see the painstaking work of many human hands: a more than 90 metre-long woven installation that represents a traditional fish trap used by the Yolngu, an Indigenous people, made by 13 artists and their apprentices. It is considered the biggest woven sculpture made in Australia. Finally, head to the gallery’s Great Hall to see the sun beaming through the world’s largest stained-glass ceiling.
The NGV Triennial runs through April 7. Admission is free.
Noon | Explore rags to riches
Flinders Lane was the centre of Melbourne’s rag trade, as its textile industry was known, until production moved offshore starting in the 1960s. Today, it’s home to a number of gorgeous shops and restaurants. The city’s most beautiful retail space must belong to Alpha60, a local brother-sister fashion label (think boxy shirts and breezy culottes), whose store inside the Chapter House building occupies a cathedral-like space with lofty, vaulted ceilings, pointed-arch windows and a baby grand piano.
Across the road, Craft Victoria, a subterranean gallery and store, features experimental Australian ceramics and textile art. After your shopping, drop into Gimlet at Cavendish House, a glamorous restaurant where crisply dressed waiters sail by with caviar and lobster roasted in a wood-fired oven, but you don’t have to go all out: Squeeze in at the bar right after the doors open at noon for an expertly made gin martini ($AU29) before the lunch rush.
1:30pm | Dive Into Chinatown
On weekends, Chinatown’s sidewalks are a crawl of families out for yum cha (what Australians call dim sum, from the Cantonese for “drink tea”). Melbourne’s Chinatown is the Southern Hemisphere’s oldest, established in the 1850s during the Victorian gold rush, when tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants came seeking their fortune.
Spend an hour in the Museum of Chinese Australian History (AU$12.50), where you’ll learn how the Victorian government introduced discriminatory laws to tax and limit Chinese arrivals. This paved the way for the 1901 White Australia policy, laws that restricted non-European immigration. There will be plenty to talk about over lunch.
Head to ShanDong MaMa, a mother-and-daughter-run restaurant in a nearby shopping arcade to fill up on mackerel dumplings (AU$24.80) and vegan zucchini potstickers (AU$17.80).
3pm | Find happiness in hot jam
Australia doesn’t have much in the way of regional cuisine, but one local exception may be the hot-jam doughnut. Most likely an evolution of a German Berliner, the doughnuts are fried, pumped with fluorescent-red jam, rolled in sugar and served tongue-burning hot from vans. Try one from a pioneer, American Doughnut Kitchen, parked outside the Queen Victoria Market (AU$2).
Then wander through the market: Vendors will be showing off their lung capacity by hollering end-of-the-day discounts. You might get a good deal on a tray of shucked Sydney rock oysters or half of a cooked Moreton Bay bug (a kind of lobster), which you can eat on the spot. Also check out Books for Cooks, a haven of about 20,000 new and secondhand books dedicated to food and cooking.
5pm | Try a frozen treat
Lygon Street, in Carlton, is Melbourne’s original Little Italy, where postwar migrants installed some of the city’s first espresso machines and imported Italian goods. For a glimpse at the new guard, check out Pidapipó, a neon-lit gelateria where the product is kept inside pozzetti, Italian for “little wells,” for freshness.
After a gelato, enjoy leisurely plucking titles from the shelves at Readings, the flagship location of a much-loved independent chain of bookstores. (Check out the 2023 Stella Prize long list for help navigating of-the-moment Australian authors.) Readings also has a bookshop just for children a few doors down.
6pm | Crack into crab
You don’t have time to try Melbourne’s full cornucopia of cuisines, but you can make some headway at Manzé, a new Mauritian restaurant in North Melbourne. Mauritian food — shaped by East African, South Asian and French influences — is not typical in Melbourne, but chef Nagesh Seethiah’s fun and free-form cultural blending is. The snacks are so full of flavour, they practically cartwheel off the plate. Expect dishes like pickled mussels or taro fritters in fruity, fermented chile sauces and bold chutneys (from AU$4.50).
The interior, with rattan chairs and breezy linen curtains, can fit only 24 diners. That’s fine: You’re sitting streetside in summer, cracking into blue swimmer crab in buttery, coconut-curry sauce (AU$26) and drinking natural wine as 1970s Mauritian tunes swirl from the speaker. What more could you want?
8pm | Rock in an old cinema
Live music in Melbourne thrives in many forms, including sticky-floor pubs like the Curtin or the Tote. While Melbourne has lost some of its midsize music venues over the years, a number of old spaces have been preserved — and have even reopened — against the odds.
One newcomer on the north side is the Northcote Theater, a landmark former cinema built in 1912 that welcomed live music into its 1,400-capacity auditorium in 2022. If you want to stay central, see what’s on at the Forum, another former movie palace that is a delightful mess of architectural styles. Many Melburnians have fond memories of seeing their favourite band there, under the auditorium’s twinkling “starry” sky.
Sunday
9am | Sip sencha in the sun
Melbourne perfected the elevated breakfast; at almost any neighbourhood cafe you can order poached eggs, sourdough and fresh-vegetable sides with a velvety flat white. Many of the most refreshing breakfast spots these days are Asian.
Go to Cibi, a Japanese cafe, design store and grocer (expanded in October) in the once-gritty, now-stylish north-side suburb of Collingwood. Light beams into the large industrial space, which feels calm even when all its mismatched chairs are filled. The classic order is a breakfast plate that includes grilled salmon, seasoned rice, miso soup and tamagoyaki, a rolled omelette (AU$27). Afterward, browse Cibi’s attached design store, filled with specialty Japanese products like tenugui (hand-dyed cotton cloth) and daikon graters. Or pick up the cafe’s self-titled cookbook.
11am | Explore modern art
Heide Museum of Modern Art, a gallery and sculpture park that was once the home of art patrons John and Sunday Reed, sprawls along the Yarra River. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the Reeds hosted many artists in Australia’s emerging modernist movement. The current exhibition, Always Modern: The Heide Story (through February 4), in the Reeds’ original cottage, gathers works like Sidney Nolan’s early impressions of the 19th-century Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, and Mirka Mora’s intensely colored, mournful figures.
Architecture lovers will adore the sun-splashed limestone walls of the Heide Modern, designed as a “gallery to be lived in.” Join a guided tour of the building, included with museum admission (AU$25), Sundays and Thursdays at 11am.
KEY STOPS
- Caretaker’s Cottage: A cocktail bar in a former church caretaker’s quarters, has exceptionally warm hospitality and freezer-cold martinis.
- Heide Museum of Modern Art: An art museum and a sculpture park, feels like a secret piece of bushland northeast of the city.
- National Gallery of Victoria: Better known as the NGV, is Australia’s most-visited museum, with walls made of bluestone.
- Manzé: A Mauritian restaurant and natural wine bar that amps up flavours with fruity, fermented chile sauces and spiced chutneys.
WHERE TO EAT
- Soi 38: A Thai-street-food kitchen hidden in a parking garage.
- Thai Baan: Draws diners to line up for its boat noodles, a Thai dish with a dark, aromatic broth originally sold by vendors in canals.
- One or Two: Down an alley in Chinatown, is a welcoming cocktail den that offers a brief respite from the city.
- Stalactites: A long-standing Greek restaurant where families and late-night revellers come together for the love of a midnight souvlaki.
- Cathedral Coffee: A cafe by day, wine bar by night in an old arcade.
- Gimlet at Cavendish House: With its charming, light-filled dining room, is the kind of place where you can order lobster, caviar or a late-night cheeseburger.
WHERE TO STAY
- United Places: A luxury boutique hotel in the South Yarra neighbourhood, offers a sleek spin on brutalist architecture. Its 12 suites have textured concrete walls, rain showers and private terraces. One- and two-bedroom suites available, starting from AU$695.
- QT Melbourne: A 188-room hotel whose striped, gold-accented and neon lobby encapsulates its quirky industrial vibe and maximalist décor. Rooms from about AU$300.
- Zagame’s House: A once-faded motel that was gutted and modernized, has 97 rooms with dark tones and gold accents. Rooms from about AU$229.
- For short-term rentals: The city center has listings for mostly modern, boxy condo apartments. You’re more likely to find homes with more character, and to get the flavour of local life, in suburbs like Fitzroy, East Melbourne, Richmond, South Yarra and South Melbourne.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Tacey Rychter
Photographs by: Susan Wright
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
