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The Age Good Food Guide 2016: Melbourne's 'hot & new' restaurants 2015/16

Roslyn Grundy and Gemima Cody

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Each year The Age Good Food Guide releases a list of the 10 hottest new restaurants that have opened since the last edition was published – the buzziest places in town right now, regardless of score.

Here's our snackshot of the year that was, featuring green thumbs, greasy fingers and finally, some contemporary Asian food that lets Melbourne shake a full fist at Sydney.

Anchovy

It's the sharp injection of freshness and creativity Melbourne has been waiting for. Part-Vietnamese, part-Australian, all vibrancy, the bar-diner serves tiny pork and black ear mushroom pies and sticky intercostals with sharp wines and sharper service.

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The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: The formula works: tightly focused classic Vietnamese flavours backed by a smart drinks list – Shadowfax chardonnay, Hugel riesling and longnecks of Tsingtao – designed to draw in locals for a long time, or just a good time at the bar. The space is minimal – a bar girt by white wall panels and dangling bulbs – but the good times are maximal.

338 Bridge Road, Richmond, 03 9428 3526, anchovy.net.au

Belle's Hot Chicken & Bar Clarine

Equal parts Nashville-style fried chicken shack – delivering good times, ghost pepper heat and PBRs – and natural wine bar, pushing low-intervention grape juice, great tunes and contemporary snacks with a Southern corn-and-boiled-peanuts spin.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: Morgan McGlone, lauded ex-chef of Husk in the US, and Miranda Campbell, long of Gerald's Bar, threw their serious credentials and a bracket of natural wines into the fried chicken ring last year and turned everyone into a hot mess for Nashville-style bird, in which chicken portions are brined, fried, dipped in spices then coated with paprika-fuelled fire dust. To get the best out of Belle's, get the dark meat (with waffles on the side, if they're on), and traditional sides like green beans cooked to a mush with pork skin, a potato salad fire blanket and frosty Pabst Blue Ribbon lager.

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150-156 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 03 9077 0788, belleshotchicken.com

Estelle Bistro

The cutesy pink and black room is now coppery and buff. Likewise, the tasting menu has become a relaxed list of Euro-leaning snacks you want every night of the week – like 'nduja​ spread on toasts with a lacy-bottomed quail's egg. The technique-driven dishes can now be found next door at ESP.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: Estelle Bistro has plenty of character – think rough brick walls, dark recycled timber, 12-seat bar and a covered, fern-fringed heated rear courtyard for larger groups. And there's flex in the menu: drop in for snacks such as square-cut chickpea fries sprinkled with sweet-salty-smoky faux bacon or stay for the whole E-M-D procession. A highlight among the starters is beautifully tender roasted octopus topped with peppery nasturtium leaf.

243 High Street, Northcote, 03 9489 4609, estellebistro.com

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Kappo

Everything happens in precise, whispery movements at this suave, omakase-style eatery, where you select from up to 40 ingredients and leave the rest to the chef, Kentaro Usami.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: Pick from a list of up to 40 ingredients, among them, perhaps, wakame and wagyu, tomato and tuna belly, head chef Kentaro Usami will tailor a meal for you in five, seven or nine nuanced courses. The only other big decision is which pair of chopsticks to choose from a fabric-lined box. On the kitchen's whim you might receive a refined surf 'n' turf (crumbed quail legs alongside caviar-dotted pearl meat), snapper, tofu and sweetcorn in a heady dashi, and Japanese-style tartare – chopped lobster, salmon, sea grapes, crunchy black sesame crumbs – that you mix to taste with a slim bamboo paddle.

1 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 03 9639 9500, kappo.com.au

Lume

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It's big. It's bold. It's sometimes downright uncomfortable, but there's no doubting chefs Shaun Quade​ and John-Paul Fiechtner's​ contemporary fine diner is one of the most interesting and ambitious projects of the year.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: The tasting menu is a wild, challenging, technique-driven ride, where croissants are dropped in the middle of the meal with cauliflower masquerading as camembert, and ribbons of cow udder (amazing, by the way – calamari-tender and salty) come with a large polenta crisp and a crab custard moulded to look like baby corn. This is frontier cooking, guaranteed to hit diners in their "hey!" and "huh?" zones in equal measure.

226 Coventry Street, South Melbourne, 03 9690 0185, restaurantlume.com

Magic Mountain Saloon

At the heart of this inner-city marble-and-neon party bar and sibling to Cookie, chef Karen Batson is delivering blistering hot Thai and providing a definitive answer to the question of where to take new dates, work groups and everyone else, except the hard of hearing.

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The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: That Magic Mountain Saloon has a resident DJ, looks like a warehouse nightclub (red neon, stencil art, mesh screens), attention to (excellent) cocktails and wine might have you suspecting the food is a mere alcohol-absorbing afterthought. But with executive chef Karen Batson in charge there are plenty of robustly flavoured, Thai-with a-whiff-of-American-barbecue reasons to come for the food alone.

62 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, 03 9078 0078, magicmountainsaloon.com.au

Minamishima

In a backstreet dining room of stone and wood, 12 stools face Koichi Minamishima, who crafts sushi of rare purity and precision with little more than a knife, a blowtorch and his bare hands. Breathtaking.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: You want to be ringside for this $150-a-head sushi experience, watching the chefs conjure jewel-like nigirizushi from carefully seasoned rice and seafood sourced locally and from Tokyo's Tsukiji fish markets. Some are briefly blowtorched, others speckled with sesame seeds or swaddled with nori. It's omakase (chef's choice) – a procession of 15 individual pieces from delicate king george whiting to lush, buttery tuna belly and rich, sweet saltwater eel, followed by clear soup and green tea granita.

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4 Lord Street, Richmond, 03 9429 5180, minamishima.com.au

O.My

It's a degustation-only restaurant in Beaconsfield run by three brothers all aged under 30. Almost everything is grown on site, foraged from nearby creeks or sourced from local farmers. No foams, no fuss. Just fresh, smart cooking.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: Is this the most improbable restaurant in Victoria? Three brothers – the youngest just 21 – are building an exciting food and wine destination in a city fringe suburb hitherto untouched by the hand of contemporary dining, let alone the wand of degustation. It's hard to know who is more excited: the locals or the Bertoncello boys themselves.

23 Woods Street, Beaconsfield, 03 9769 9000, omyrestaurant.com.au

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Tipo 00

There's barely room to swing a cat and the decor amounts to the tools of the job – wine bottles and an illuminated serving stage – but this little pasta bar, with its perfect silken rabbit ragu pappardelle and easy-eating offal, proves sharp Italian will always rule Melbourne.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: Pity the carb-hater who will never know what it is to break into Andreas Papadakis and Alberto Fava's perfectly formed tortellini, shiny with browned butter and capturing its parmesan, sage and asparagus heart, or stick a fork into rigatoni with mind-blowing bolognese, fragrant with cinnamon and chicken livers. Risotto blazes bright with nettles, and offal becomes a meat of the people with ruffles of poached, shaved and grilled ox tongue over a sticky balsamic reduction.

361 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, 03 9942 3946, tipo00.com.au

Transformer Fitzroy

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That it's vegetarian is beside the point. All you need to know is chef Luke Florence​ is plating smart, sharp, seasonal dishes at this new, airy Fitzroy warehouse. No one's drinking the wellness Kool-Aid: ricotta and rye gnocchi with wild blueberries has pull for everyone.

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 says: An ex-transformer factory has been turned into what you might call potting-shed-chic. Vines creep up mesh panels towards soaring timber ceilings, and small spotlights sprout from between the plants. Don't expect the huge, cheap stir-fries of sister venue Vegie Bar next door. Instead it's all stoneware plates of watermelon, in both fresh and compressed-then grilled form, countered by pistachio oil and almond cheese. Or a Thai-Italian mash-up of fried polenta, vibrant green curry and cumin-y cauliflower rubble.

99 Rose Street, Fitzroy, 03 9419 2022, transformerfitzroy.com

The Age Good Food Guide 2016 will be available for $10 with The Saturday Age on Saturday, September 26 from participating newsagents and supermarkets while stocks last. It can also be purchased in selected bookshops and online at theageshop.com.au/agegfg2016 for $24.99. #goodfoodguide

Roslyn GrundyRoslyn Grundy is Good Food's deputy editor and the former editor of The Age Good Food Guide.
Gemima CodyGemima Cody is former chief restaurant critic for The Age and Good Food.

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