A restaurant takes a village. Chefs are vital, of course, and the vast majority of the Good Food Guide is a celebration of their talents. But then there are hundreds of fishers, farmers, designers, drinks gurus, ideas people and campaigners whose combined forces also make Victoria such a vital place to eat and drink.

Among them, there are those people and businesses with outsized impact, completely in tune with the cultural forces that are shaping our cities, towns and suburbs. They are starting new conversations, moving hospitality forward and gearing it towards the future. What follows is dedicated to them.

Jung Eun Chae

If there were a ratio that plotted a restaurant’s size against its influence, Chae’swould be off the charts. The six-seat chef’s table run by Korean chef Jung Eun Chae – which doubles as the kitchen island of her home – has set Korean food in Melbourne on a new course; one driven by craft and restraint.

Following winding roads through the Dandenong Ranges up to the secluded restaurant has become a pilgrimage for many, even beyond the world of food. Comedian Ali Wong and actress Marisa Tomei are among past guests, all drawn to the gentle broths, lively banchan, and simply rendered produce brought to life by hand-crafted products from sesame oil to chilli sauce.

Dozens of onggi, the large ceramic jars used for centuries to make slow-fermented condiments, dot the property. This year, Chae and her partner Yoora Yoon added 50 more, allowing them to make more two-year-aged ganjang, Korea’s term for soy sauce, and other ferments that make her food truly of its place.

Helped along by a worldwide fascination with Korea and its culture, Chae has expanded our understanding of her country’s food and inspired more chefs to
take the same patient road she has. And, across cultural lines, she’s shown that not watering down a dish, a method or a menu is its own powerful act of preservation.

Kantaro Okada

First he opened an onigiri and coffee bar. Then there was a destination for sandwiches made with shokupan, Japan’s fluffy milk bread. In 2022, the first Hareruya Pantry arrived, a one-stop for bentos, matcha, mochi and gelato.
And last year, a kakigori specialist making premier shaved-ice desserts debuted.

Kantaro Okada has a talent for crystal ball-gazing when it comes to our Japanese food fascination. Zeroing in on a single, affordable item at his venues, Okada and his collaborators are at the bleeding edge of casual dining in Melbourne.

In a year where the public’s appetite for all things Japanese was seemingly bottomless, Okada’s hyper-focused venues – 279 and Le Bajo Milkbar in North Melbourne, the CBD’s Sebastian Kakigori, the brand-new Atsu in Carlton – felt especially of their time.

Watching Okada’s universe grow since 2019, many others have been inspired to bring under-the-radar Japanese dishes to a mainstream Australian audience. But his greatest influence could be a shift in mindset towards quality over quantity. More daytime hangouts now serve tight menus built around expertise and precision, from the madeleine shops to the tofu makers
and the chai stands.

Then there’s Okada’s pursuit of great coffee, seen in the beans his venues serve, and is involvement in Collingwood cafe Chiaki and a new Melbourne coffee festival showcasing 26 Japanese roasters. Keeping a foot in both country’s cultures, Okada gives us the best of both worlds.

Meredith Farm Produce

What do you see when you read the word Meredith? For some, it’s a paddock-full of revellers letting loose at Victoria’s best-loved music festival. For others, it’s cheese: a goat’s cheese so velvety it’s had Victorians in a spin for decades.

After graduating from artisanal disruptor to star of the supermarket cheese aisle, Meredith Dairy goat’s cheese became a fixture on plates across the state. Now, the goats behind the goods are appearing on menus themselves, a sustainable value-add that’s been met with delight by both the dining public and the people that serve it, including MoVida’sFrank Camorra. “These older female goats – so different from wild or Boer varieties – offer a delicate, less gamey flavour,” he says.

Using the goat meat makes a fitting send-off that he believes redoubles Meredith’s commitment to sustainability, making use of the animals at both ends of the dairy system.

For the time being, you’ll find their goats at select stockists and restaurants
around the state. But if we know the public’s appetite for Julie and Sandy Cameron’s wares, it won’t be long before this game-changing protein becomes a household name – and an ethical north star for Victorian producers.

Weekdays Design Studio

If you wanted to show an extra-terrestrial being what a Melbourne bar or restaurant looked like in 2025, chances are you’d pick a venue touched by Weekdays. The sweep of a gold foil letter in the hand-painted sign on the door, the drinks coaster with a quirky mascot, the merch (critical!).

Active since 2011, the design studio has unwittingly written the visual language of our dining scene thanks to its know-how with nostalgia. Directors Todd Vanneste (Weekdays’ founder) and Lachlan Philp proudly mine the past for their work across branding, packaging, websites and even
interiors.

But they’re not slaves to history: the final product is always bursting with freshness. Seeing a shiny red can of Stingrays Draught or that neon sign affixed to the pub, your mind tussles between recognition (Haven’t I seen that before?) and surprise (Now that’s different). Going deeper than mere aesthetics, understanding the backstory and weaving in the present seems to be their superpower.

The cumulative effect is more than branding, it’s world-building. When you walk into timber-panelled Castlemaine bar Love Shack, notice the backlit wall plaque that glows outside city venue Elio’s Place, go bowling at The Keys in Preston, crumple up a Nico’s-stamped bag when you’ve finished your Cubano – you’ve felt the unique Weekdays effect.

Caretaker’s Cottage

Martinis chilled to minus 18°C. Mind-dazzling milk punch. Guinness pulled with reverence. The opening gambit in 2022 augured well for bar watchers: a
trio of high-low pleasures from a gang of hospo heavyweights.

But nobody, it seems, was quite prepared for the one-percenters. The crystal-clarity of the sound design, courtesy of Tasmanian audio titans Pitt & Giblin. The detail in the service: a coaster finding its way onto the top of your glass while you step out; a staff who pour without judgement and educate when invited. The environment – an actual heritage-listed cottage encircled by high rises every which way.

Nearly four years in, Caretaker’sis both a byword for good times and a leader in customer experience. As word spread overseas, the accolades began to
pour in for Rob Libecans, Matt Stirling and Ryan Noreiks: 60th, then 23rd, then 21st and most recently 19th on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. But it was never about that. Community and quality rule the Cottage, just as they
will their brand-new sherry bar Three Horses. Caretakers indeed – silencing critics and rejigging the blueprint for publicans, mixologists and restaurateurs the world over.

The Bakers

Bakeries are as old as time, but the current fervour for them? That’s a modern-day phenomenon. First there were the lockdown queues: the skill and decadence of a pastry was one of the few culinary thrills available while
restaurants remained closed.

Then came the highly stylised shoots of viennoiserie on TikTok and Instagram, as fans hit bakeries like it was a weekend sport. Each new bakery strives to create their equivalent of a calling card. Strawberry-matcha Danishes layered with mochi. Shakshuka enrobed in laminated pastry. Japan’s melonpan transported to Italy by tiramisu flavours. We’re officially living in the era of baked good as status symbol.

With such unparalleled creativity plus a price-conscious public and hungry social media feeds, the buzz isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Bakers are again some of the most important people in our food pyramid, their
craft reaching pre-schoolers, grandparents, squads of friends, solo adventurers. Few other venues – not bars, not restaurants – can claim that kind of cross-demographic appeal. With so much innovation crammed into twists, crescents and domes, it’s hard to pinpoint a single baker who’s key
to this river of buttery gold. We’re indebted to all of them.

Pitt & Giblin

If a Japanese-inspired listening bar opens without ultra-high fidelity Tasmanian speakers, does it make a sound? Maybe, but it mightn’t make
much of a splash. Tassie speaker makers Pitt & Giblin officially have the audio game in a chokehold. Just as your fine diner must all but declare its commitment to sustainability at the door, so too must your bar confirm the
southern provenance of its sound system. But we’re not mad about it.

These speakers are gorgeous to look at: furniture-grade cabinetry crafted from Victorian blackbutt timber, clean lines, little-to-no branding. The way they respond to the shape and materials of a room can take your breath away.

You might’ve seen them at Brunswick East record bar Waxflower, who laud their “technically advanced acoustics, high sensitivity and massive output”, and describe their appearance as “really sexy”. You might’ve seen them at city hangout Wax Music Lounge. Or Caretaker’s Cottage. Or Zareh.

Beyond their striking performance, they signal that a venue is taking their music program seriously. It’s a detail regularly overlooked in bars and flashy restaurants alike, but one that can take a good experience and make it a thing of aural ecstasy. Hear, hear.

Michael Ryan

Deep in the High Country, a craftsman plies his trade in a former bank. He is an alchemist in every sense: a fine-dining chef, an apothecary, a budding nose.

His name is Michael Ryan, and for nearly two decades, his restaurant
Provenance – run with wife Jeanette Henderson – has set the fine-dining agenda for the north-eastern reaches of the state.

“Japan, Tokyo in particular, has been my muse for decades,” he says in the opening line of his book, Only in Tokyo, a culinary guide to the nation’s capital co-authored by Luke Burgess. It’s also the subject of his menu: four
courses, 18 small dishes, each alive with local produce and wild-shot proteins.

Provenance has held two hats in The Age Good Food Guide for well over a decade. But during the pandemic, Ryan turned his attention to another curiosity: amari – the herbal elixirs and one-time medicines of ancient Italy.

That curiosity is now one of Australia’s most thrilling lines of liqueur: Beechworth Bitters Company. Produced with the same clarity that defines his food, Ryan’s amari make delicious appearances on Provenance’s drinks list – but they find full expression one floor up at its companion bar. That’s
where you’ll find him after dessert – one hand dropping the needle on an early Tom Waits record, the other mixing a thinking person’s negroni.

And if that wasn’t enough, an interest in perfumery recently inspired him to develop a companion suite of fragrances to sit alongside the drinks. Talk about following your nose.

Helly Raichura

“Enter via laundry” was an instruction before it was a restaurant. An invitation into the generous mind of Helly Raichura, it began in 2018 as a pop-up in her lounge room, a radical pseudo-restaurant celebrating
the vastness of Indian food.

For many Victorian diners, it was a light-bulb moment that asked us to reckon with a cultural blindspot: we understand Italian cuisine as a tapestry of regional nuance – why not Indian? Raichura forged that path, eventually moving her home restaurant into more traditional digs where her menus would shed light on a different region of India each season.

The results – both delicious and educational – inspired a new generation of Indian culinary mavericks. Chefs such as Mischa Tropp, Harry Mangat, Saavni Krishnan and Adi Suresh began exploring regional dishes without fear – be it Keralan drinking food at Toddy Shop or blow-out Bengali feasting at Kolkata Cricket Club. “People have been expecting Indian food to turn the corner in Melbourne for so long,” said Tropp, speaking to The Age in 2023.

You only need to flip through these pages to realise it has. Released earlier this year, Raichura’s debut cookbook, The Food of Bharat, marks something
of a full-circle moment, her influence now finding its way into our homes
with recipes and stories that advance her mission: educating the dining class
of Australia on the nuance and diversity of regional Indian cooking.

Con Christopoulos and Stavros Konis

Greek food is nothing new in Melbourne. Most of the city speaks fluent spanakopita, galaktoboureko and kefalograviera. But in the last few years, a new dialect entered the chat, one that represents the cuisine more fully.
Rustic village-style cooking was the pitch of Kafeneion, the first Greek
venue from serial restaurateur Con Christopoulos and the second of his
business partner Stavros Konis, whose family run 56-year-old Salona in Richmond. It was originally conceived as a pop-up serving food that would make Yiayia happy, “but then it became its own thing. It just grew, it went crazy,” says Konis.

Simple braises of pork, celery and lemon; vegetables cooked with nothing more than olive oil and time; Victorian-made yoghurt and Cretan honey: the
food was so simple it felt silly to rave about. But it soothed and nourished, and homespun Greek restaurants have since multiplied, run by leading names such as Angie Giannakodakis as well as fresh faces, like the friends behind The Pontian Club. Spots such as Yarraville’s Tzaki offer a window into what Athenians are eating now.

All strive to write a fresh chapter in Melbourne’s Greek epic. “People are
doing a deeper dive into regional dishes and doing things that come from Greece, not just the proven taverna stuff,” says Konis. Now other restaurants around town are weaving feta, skordalia and yoghurt into their menus, even if they don’t officially fly the blue-and-white flag. We’re hungry for Greek, and this duo have a big hand in that.

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