There’s more of an informal skew to this year’s hatted restaurants, and that’s because Victoria’s dining scene has changed. Here’s how.
In 1985, a hatted restaurant might have had a grand piano in the dining room, apricot-pink walls, and boned and stuffed pheasant on its menu.
By 2015, The Age Good Food Guide’s list of hats reflected Melbourne’s more diverse fine-dining scene, with Thai and Greek restaurants, fusion takes on East Asian and Indian, and plenty of upscale Japanese.
The latest Guide, a snapshot of Victoria’s restaurants in 2025, awarded hats to several suburban Chinese restaurants with ferocious lighting and impeccable cooking; a West Bengali restaurant showcasing a regional cuisine of India; and deeply personal expressions of Korean cooking.
But the most obvious thread running through this year’s hatted venues might be a more casual brand of high-quality dining.
“Ten years ago, restaurants had to be fancy, silver service [to win a hat],” says Doju chef Mika Chae, whose modern Korean restaurant won its inaugural hat on Monday when the 2026 Guide was launched. “This year when I look at [the list of hats], it’s really more like Melbourne. More like Australia. Good food, good service, good hospitality, not about doing caviar service at the table.”
That’s perhaps best embodied by Carlton North wine bar Brico, another newly hatted venue.
“We [walk] the line with whether we’re a bar or restaurant, so it’s really nice to get recognised for the more restaurant side of it,” says co-owner Josh Begbie.
“Everyone who works here has worked in fine-dining restaurants and has a high level of service, but we do it in quite a casual, fun way.”
In a sign of this lean towards the “restaurant that feels like a bar”, this year’s Guide includes six one-hat venues with the word bar in their name. All up, there are nearly a dozen hatted venues in the 2026 Guide that might fall outside readers’ notions of what “deserves” a hat.
Rightly or wrongly, the public perception of a hat-worthy restaurant has perhaps been shaped by earlier editions of the Guide, which turns 45 this year. Often that’s a European establishment with technique-heavy dishes, expensive cutlery and hushed music playing over the speakers.
‘Everyone who works here has worked in fine-dining restaurants and has a high level of service, but we do it in quite a casual, fun way.’
Josh Begbie, Brico
Kolkata Cricket Club – newly hatted this year – is not that. An Indian restaurant from chef Mischa Tropp, at the Southbank venue cricket reruns flicker in the background while the expensive cutlery plays second fiddle to expansive breads and West Bengali dishes such as richly spiced meat on long skewers.
“We were busy [Wednesday] night,” says Tropp, after news of the accolade spread following Monday’s Good Food Guide awards. “I would say an older, whiter clientele – a traditional Good Food Guide reader – was in [that] night.”
There have been exceptions to the European fine-diner archetype over the years, such as this year’s Restaurant of the Year, Flower Drum, which took out the title four times from 1999 to 2004 and has earned dozens of hats.
There’s no particular venue, cuisine or style of service that defines a hatted venue. The overarching question is whether the venue is fulfilling its own mission, whether that’s a rollicking spot like Collingwood’s Zareh (named New Restaurant of the Year) where bar dining meets Armenian pop playing on vinyl, or a something-for-everyone outer-suburban diner such as La Vetta in Mickleham.
As household budgets have tightened in the past three years, many people are seeking less formal dining experiences that don’t feel intimidating or come with the minimum spend of a set menu.
Kafeneion – a late-night hangout for humble Greek cooking – offers all its main courses in two sizes, with even the small a large enough serving for two people.
Brico’s list of suppliers (Loddon Estate, Force of Nature, Day’s Walk Farm) has plenty of crossover with those of more high-end restaurants such as Reine & La Rue and Harriot, both in the city’s business end.
But Begbie says the venue’s relaxed atmosphere and dining style appeals to a broader cross-section of people, something an older couple dining there recently commented on. “There’s older people that are well-dressed and they look happy when they leave. There’s younger people out in front on their vapes, and they’re having a good time,” says Begbie.
If the Guide’s editors should strive to reflect the dynamism and evolution of its city’s dining culture, it follows that venues offering new ideas or styles of cooking would be included.
“When I first opened in 2023, I couldn’t put [the word] doenjang on the menu because no-one understood what doenjang meant – I had to say ‘Korean miso’,” says Chae. “But in a year, people became more curious about Korean ingredients. I changed the entire menu into Korean words.
“A huge change in two years at Doju. I’m very proud, and very happy to see the changes in a short period of time.”
He joins a growing number of chefs presenting an unfettered expression of their heritage, one that’s rooted in what they know rather than what the broader public might expect. Seen at Doju as well as fellow hatted restaurants Zareh, Vietnamese-Australian spot Anchovy in Richmond and new-wave bistro Malin in Carlton North, it’s a culinary viewpoint that isn’t going unnoticed.
Asked if hats translate to more people through the door, Tropp said they help to reach a different type of customer, something Begbie also agreed with.
“Now that we can put a thing up in the window, from a pure marketing point of view I think it [attracts] tourism and an older, white dollar,” Tropp says.
The Good Food app is the home of the 2026 edition of The Age Good Food Guide, with more than 500 reviews including 123 Critics’ Picks. The app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.
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Emma Breheny – Emma is Good Food’s Melbourne eating out and restaurant editor and editor of The Age Good Food Guide.
Frank Sweet is editor of The Age Good Food Guide 2026 and a former food and drink editor at Time Out Beijing.
