Hot List Update: Four Newly Added Restaurants and Bars To Try

The Hot List is the definitive guide to Melbourne’s most essential food and drink experiences, updated weekly. Learn more.

Hope you’re ready because the winter quiet times are done. It’s open season for venues. From now till somewhere between the end of the Australian Open and Anzac Day weekend, the city will be awash with new restaurants, bars and cafes vying for your attention.

Melbourne’s heating up, and so is The Hot List. Here are four new recent additions we’ve been loving recently.

Saadi, CBD

Sunda had a great run, but at the end of January the esteemed Southeast Asian restaurant closed after seven years. But we lost more than just a great restaurant – Sunda’s closure also robbed us of a striking dining room. It would have been a shame for it to stay dormant.

Luckily for us, chefs Saavni Krishnan and Sriram Aditya took Saadi, their long-running pop-up series, to the room for a residency in May. Even luckier – they extended that residency for June. And then July. Most lucky of all, they decided to make it permanent. Saadi the pop-up became Saadi the restaurant earlier this month.

“I’ve always cooked someone else’s menu, but the fact that we finally have something we can call our own is amazing,” Aditya told Broadsheet.

There’s an ever-evolving menu of pan-Indian dishes, remixed with experience that Aditya and Krishnan have picked up cheffing throughout Melbourne and Sydney.

Zareh, Collingwood

Saadi’s not the only high-profile pop-up to recently go permanent. Because Tom Sarafian, the former Bar Saracen chef that Broadsheet once called Melbourne’s “pop-up prince”, has at last delivered his long, long, long -teased restaurant.

Zareh is a deeply personal tribute to his and partner Jinane Bou-Assi’s respective Armenian and Lebanese heritages. And after years of anticipation, it’s somehow delivered – and even exceeded – its precariously high expectations.

You’ll fall in love with a different dish each time you visit, but it’s hard to look past the basturma toasts laden with ribbons of cured Wagyu, the chicken kebab, or the Lebanese batata harra potatoes. Of course, Sarafian knows his way around hummus – it’s as good as ever here, crowned with a medley of king prawns and spanner crab. Make sure plenty of flatbread is on hand for liberal dipping and swiping.

Melitta Next Door, Carlton North

Bar Bellamy’s owners Danielle and Oska Whitehart always intended for their bar and bistro to serve as a relaxed “every night of the week”-style spot for Carlton North locals – but today’s tough economy was keeping some potential patrons away.

“Some younger neighbours around here are finding it a bit difficult to interact with,” Danielle told Broadsheet.
Their fix for that is Melitta Next Door – a new space right beside Bellamy with the same focus on high quality food and drinks, but with more accessible price points. There’s a Mediterranean menu of tapas-style snacks devised by former Napier Quarter chef Lorena Corso, plus a bunch of great wines on tap and cocktails in the freezer.

And the Whiteharts used to visit this building a lot back in their house party days, so they know a thing or two about keeping vibes in the room nice and high.

Boire

Companion venues seem to be having a moment. Over in North Melbourne, the beloved Hot-Listed Mauritian restaurant Manze has just launched a spin-off across the road: Boire.

Whereas Manze takes its name from the Mauritian creole verb for eating, Boire uses the creole verb for drinking. So unlike its food-focused older sibling, drinks take centrestage here. There are more than 100 bottles of wine on hand, plus a line-up of fruit-forward cocktails such as a Banana and Cacao Old Fashioned.

There’s a snacky bar menu, with dishes like fried goat ribs and boiled peanuts, plus a cameo from Manze’s taro and ginger fritters. Boire also has a daytime element with a takeaway lunch counter during the week.

The Hot List is Proudly Sponsored by Square.