Restaurant ReviewsTop 5 food streets in Melbourne
The beauty of Melbourne is that in one city you can get a taste of a whole myriad of cultures without having to travel for hours. You can go from the really cheap budget options to the other extreme, the upmarket and premium dining. This article intends to fill you in on just a few of them.
If Italian food is what you have a taste for, then Lygon St in Carlton is the place to be. As you walk along Lygon St, you will be greeted almost constantly by restauranteurs trying to drum up business for their restaurant. At first this starts off cute, but eventually it wears thin; Who knows, maybe I"m just a grump. That aside, these folks still know how to provide great service. Restaurants along here have just about every Italian dish imaginable from pizza to pasta to risotto and of course amazing bruchetta.
Italian food of course isn"t for everybody, so just a short walk away is Lonsdale St. This is the epicentre for all things Greek. There are plenty of Greek restaurants along here all with their unique character. There are the more traditional eateries as well as restaurants with a more modern feel. A lot of the food also has a distinctive "Melbourne" feel to it as well. A guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
A few more blocks up the road from Lygon St is the very small, but bursting at the seams Little Bourke St. This street is Melbourne"s Chinatown and this is made obvious by the big traditional chinese archways at either end of each block. For Chinese food, you need to look no further, but they also have thai food and japanese food here as well. The street runs for about three blocks, and all the way along you will be greeted by restauranteurs trying to get you to eat in their restaurant. The restaurants on this street range from the very basic dumpling houses where $20 will have you leaving extremely full and satisfied to the more upmarket restaurants such as Flower Drum. The other benefit to Chinatown is that most of these restaurants are open until late and are close to a lot of entertainment venues around the city, so great for a late night meal.
To continue with the Asian food theme, you can"t forget Victoria St in Richmond. This little street is wall to wall vietnamese restaurants. There is plenty of choice here, however unlike some of the other "food" streets in Melbourne, this one is fairly quiet and generally you don"t have people out the front greeting you. You will also find you"ll need to make a booking for a lot of these restaurants as they can be quite popular. Especially on a Friday night. The food here ranges from traditional Vietnamese fare, to dishes tweaked to more "Aussie" tastes, to even food that would look more in place in a chinese restaurant. In all, a great place to eat if you"d like to try something different and out of the CBD.
Another key restaurant strip in Melbourne is along the south bank of the river in the aptly named Southbank. There are two main sections of Southank; Southgate and Crown Casino. Both these areas cater for family dining as well as serious upmarket and premium dining. The food covers just about everything you could think of. There are places for great steak, places for great pasta, places for great steak AND pasta, you name it, it"s there. There"s premium asian food such as sushi, teppenyaki and chinese fare as well as typical pub food such as parma and chips.
So as you can see, Melbourne is a city with many complementary and contrasting styles of food and it makes it a hub for trying different foods from around the world. You can go from the very cheap, to the upmarket dining experience. It"s well worth a visit, and if you happen to live here already, get out there and experience it.