Six to Try: The Latest Hot List Additions

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

Melbourne’s hospitality scene has served up a seemingly endless line of excellent venues this year. It can be tricky to keep track of what’s going on, but we’ve done the work for you. These newly Hot Listed spots stand out among the very competitive class of 2026 so far – add them to your hit list.

Atelier Enso, Carlton

Alicia Feng is a World Coffee Championships judge, a certified Q grader and one of Melbourne’s most respected coffee figures. Atelier Enso is her Carlton cafe where she reimagines the role of the barista entirely. In it, Feng has opted for automated coffee machines – something controversial in the specialty coffee scene. Link Bar milk frothers, X Bloom filter coffee machines and Eversys automatic espresso machines line the benches here. But the machines don’t replace staff – they’re dialled in by baristas who still brew cups to order with them.

The idea here is that the automation frees up staff so that they can spend time connecting with customers. The team uses Eversys machines for the house blend, resulting in impossibly smooth long blacks, and still opts for traditional espresso machines when it comes to seasonal blends. Enso looks to be the tip of the spear; a blueprint for future Melbourne cafes.

Côte Basque, CBD

When Andrew McConnell opens a new restaurant, Melburnians tend to stop what they’re doing and pay attention. We’ve come to expect excellence for good reason – the restaurateur has a history of getting it right. Côte Basque is the first restaurant Trader House has opened since Gimlet in 2020, and the ode to the grill restaurants of Europe’s Basque region has arrived with all the hype and history you’d hope.

Côte Basque is only the third business to operate at its Crossley Lane address, which opened as Tavola Freddo Cantina in 1954. Its second incarnation came in 1996, when it became Becco, a stylish Italian restaurant. The 100-seat dining-room’s brilliant original features, including its iconic terraced layout; the wall of angled steel-framed windows; the green terrazzo floor, the ceiling detailing; and the warm, original wood panelling are retained – thanks to Sydney design studio Acme.

A concise, two-part menu features a page of daily changing ingredients cooked over mallee root and coconut charcoals. Beef also gets special attention in the form of a new hybrid from Wagyu producer Blackmore, a crossbreed of Wagyu and Galician rubia gallega. It’s complemented by a wine list from Trader House beverage director Leanne Altmann and a sharp selection of cocktails.

Daybaker, Abbotsford

When Charlie Duffy’s new Abbotsford bakery opened at the end of May, pastries were regularly selling out before 10am. Almost three months later, not much has changed. Visitors are still grabbing baked goods and enjoying them streetside, and pastries are still usually gone by 10.30am.

Daybaker is built around a single idea: do a small number of things extremely well. The menu is seasonal, restrained and ever-changing, reflecting Duffy’s ethos to let local produce do the heavy lifting when it comes to toppings and fillings. And it’s working. Locals can’t get enough of the pared-back spot, and people are flocking from further afield to try bomba calabrese pastries; chocolate, rye and toffee cookies; whisky canelés; croissants and more.

Delmonte, Carlton

The King & Godfree building is one of Lygon Street’s main attractions. So when the ground floor space closed in 2024, it felt like something was missing from the busy pocket of Carlton. Following a long renovation, the space reopened as Delmonte, a restaurant and wine room run by Jamie Valmorbida.

It opened to understandable fanfare – the renovation was long and the project is a significant one, intended to usher the space into the future and ensure it can be enjoyed by next-gen Melburnians. Culinary director Karen Martini’s menu spans northern Italy, with dishes inspired by the mountainous Veneto region near Venice. Salumi is taken seriously, with house-made condiments to match. And there are familiar pasta staples. The drinks menu covers 11 cocktails and a 300-bottle Piedmont-focused wine list.

Dutch Rules Distilling, Mitcham

There’s plenty happening in Mitcham – mostly family-run restaurants, takeaway spots and small independent stores – but the suburb has never had anything like Dutch Rules. The excellent Sri Lankan-leaning dishes here from rising star chef Viveik Vinoharan (formerly of Lilac Wine) play with Italian, Japanese and French influences. They’re unexpected, unpredictable and – paired with the excellent house-distilled gins – an absolute blast.

Gins draw on botanicals from Australia and South Asia, reflecting owner Danny Perera’s Sri Lankan heritage and his interest in the movement of spices and other ingredients across borders. They’re served alongside Vinoharan’s creations – plates such as lamb-belly skewers marinated in toasted coriander, fennel and cumin, or tortellini filled with St David Dairy curd served in a beurre blanc enriched with whey, brown butter, curry leaves and kasoori methi (fenugreek). Dutch Rules brings cool, casual and considered dining to an otherwise suburban stretch in the east.

Prive, CBD

Prive is the sibling bar to Edition Hospitality’s Reine, the magnificent restaurant in the Cathedral Room of Melbourne’s former stock exchange next door. And Prive is just as opulent, albeit more intimate. It sits above the underground vaults of the William Pitt-designed Safe Deposit Building on Queen Street. The former security building once stored windfalls of the 19th-century gold rush.

Now, the 1890-built, heritage-listed space holds a private dining room and a 24-seat cocktail bar. In it, you’ll find French-inspired cocktails and snacks. The space works with the building’s history, not against it. You’ll notice details such as natural stones; a handmade, artificially aged mirror by local maker Luke Price; Parisian designer Elsa Foulon’s hand-pleated silk pendant lights; and amber-brown sconces from Melbourne sculptor Sarah Nedovic.

The short cocktail list is complex in flavour but simple in its ingredients and presentation. It’s exactly the kind of spot that tends to work in the CBD – great drinks in a repurposed space that celebrates the heritage of the building.

The Hot List is proudly sponsored by Square.

Additional reporting by Audrey Payne, Claire Adey, Haymun Win, Michael Harden, Quincy Malesovas.