Book Now: First Events Revealed for Dine Out, Broadsheet’s Debut Food Festival

If you missed the news earlier this month, Broadsheet is launching a new annual food festival this August.

In partnership with Mastercard, Square and Cat Amongst The Pigeons, we’re staging 40 events across the city, featuring Melbourne’s best chefs, restaurants, bars, bakeries and more. There’ll be restaurant swaps, left-field collabs and special menus worth crossing town for. Our brightest hospo talents are ready to flex their passion and creativity.

Today we’re excited to share the first round of venues and dishes with you, with more to come soon. All tickets are available at dineout.broadsheet.com.au.

Hot-Listed venues Florian and Hope St Radio are teaming up for Breakfast for Dinner, a ticketed night-time event at Hope St Radio pairing Florian’s timeless food with the wine bar’s immaculate vibes.

At Carlton’s Bistra, another Hot-Listed restaurant, you have a rare chance to experience Sydney institution Corner 75 in Melbourne. Young hands from Baba’s Place and Sixpenny (both Hot-Listed themselves) recently took over the four-decade-old Hungarian restaurant, calling it a “preservation project”. For one night, they’re sharing a three-course set menu of reimagined Hungarian dishes, with matched wines available by the glass.

Head to Barra, Alejandro Saravia’s vibing Latin American bar, for a collab dinner with Balaclava’s Moonhouse. Together, the two restaurants will explore chifa, Chinese Peruvian cuisine. Lock in for crisp pork and chicken wontons with tamarind and aji amarillo (yellow chilli), XO scallops tangled in vermicelli, Peruvian fried rice and cured cobia dressed in rocoto (a type of capsicum) oil.

Brunswick’s Bar Spontana and Kensington’s Arnold’s are likewise dabbling with fusion. At the larger Brunswick restaurant, they’ll draw on charcoal cooking and fermentation to serve beef larb tostadas with toasted sticky rice; tacos with fried snapper in sour gaeng som curry; pork jowl quesadillas; and red curry birria tacos.

In the CBD, Shane Delia’s institution Maha is bringing in two heavyweights – Yarra Valley winery Mount Mary and WA producer Manjimup Truffles – for a luxury menu featuring the likes of smoked potato and kishk (a dried, fermented mix of yoghurt and cracked wheat) with black garlic, pine mushrooms, and Manjimup black truffles. Mount Mary wines, including the revered Quintet and Triolet, will be on pour.

Up the other end of the city another institution, Bar Lourinha, is celebrating “almost” 20 years in business with an intimate dinner in the private dining room upstairs. The menu will journey through signature dishes influenced by the spice shops of Goa, the coastal kitchens of Malacca, and the sun-drenched markets of the Mediterranean, paired with wines from Lisbon, Rioja, Sardinia and other storied regions.

And at Carlton Wine Room, chef Ross O’Meara, host of SBS series Gourmet Farmer, is taking over the kitchen for a night to showcase his knowledge of wild-caught game – venison specifically.

In addition, a bunch of venues are putting on special drinks, dishes or entire menus for Dine Out: Pidapipo x Masses Bagels, Dessous, Hazel, La Tortilleria, Bahama Gold, Lankan Tucker, Waxflower, Marmont, Suupaa, Eat Pierogi Make Love, Ponyfish Island and Tokyo Lamington x Continental Deli (Sydney) – with more to be announced. Visit the Dine Out site to find out more.

Sign up to Broadsheet Today, our flagship daily newsletter, to get more Dine Out news ahead of the general public (and secure the tickets you want).

Broadsheet’s Dine Out festival debuts from August 4 to 10, 2025, in Melbourne and August 11 to 17, 2025, in Sydney, with 80 events across the two cities.

dineout.broadsheet.com.au

Dine Out Melbourne – first round venues

Bahama Gold
Bar Lourinha
Bar Spontana x Arnold’s Wine Bar
Barra x Moonhouse
Carlton Wine Room
Dessous
Eat Pierogi Make Love
Florian
Hazel
Hope St Radio
La Tortilleria
Lankan Tucker
Maha
Marmont x Mitch Orr
Pidapipo x Masses Bagels
Ponyfish Island
Suuppa
Tokyo Lamington x Continental Deli (Syd)