Where To Eat (and Drink) Right Now: Australia’s Best Openings in April

Every month, dozens of restaurants, bars and cafes open across Australia. Here, we’ve rounded up the best April launches from each city to add to your hit list, whether you’re visiting from interstate, or are seeking out a new local. Happy eating.

Melbourne

Bar Olo

Piedmont, in north-western Italy, has heavily influenced Bar Olo, a laid-back 40-seater by the owners of Scopri , a well-loved Italian diner a few metres’ walk away. Behind the bar’s red-framed door, a cosy enoteca-style space is hung with still lifes of tables topped with food and wine. The real-life wine being poured, meanwhile, highlights Piedmont producers, with a couple of drops from other Italian regions, plus a few selections from France and Australia. Similarly, regional dishes fill the menu, with options including vitello tonnato (cold sliced veal in a creamy tuna sauce), agnolotti del plin with sugo d’arrosto (ravioli with a sauce made from drippings) and spoja lorda (cheese-stuffed pasta). Snackier plates include prawn tramezzini (crustless sandwiches on pillowy white bread) and rock oysters.

Sydney

Ramen Auru

When Broadsheet editor Dan Cunningham posted his first visit to Ramen Auru in Sydney’s Crows Nest on Instagram, his followers thought he was in Japan. That’s how true-to-Tokyo this new late-night eatery, run by the gang behind Nakano Darling and Yurippi – two other venues dedicated to capturing the feel of dining out in Japan – is. Fluorescent lights bathe the space in harsh white light, tables are furnished with Kleenex boxes and diners order via a shokken – an old-school Japanese ticket vending machine. Punch in your order, and the machine spits out a ticket you take to the counter for payment. Your three ramen options are yuzu-shio with chicken; a seafood soup with prawns; and a classic pork tonkotsu that you can customise (noodle firmness, soup thickness and back-fat ratio) to taste. Familiar sides include gyoza, salted karaage and kimchi. Less familiar is the Chinese-influenced sauteed liver and chives, a classic Japanese dish that slaps hardest with rice.

Adelaide

Makan Wine Bar

The owners of this rustic and relaxed new wine bar wanted to do something unexpected – the result is a venue merging Eastern and Western wines and cooking. Makan Wine Bar, set in a playfully designed loft with a playlist pumping tunes from the ’80s and ’90s, also fills a gap: there’s a distinct lack of Asian-focused wine bars in Adelaide. The venue showcases 60 varieties of wine, ranging from local small-batch bottles (like Hey Pup’s carbonic shiraz) to favourite international labels (a Japanese dessert wine from Yamanashi). As for food, it pulls influences from Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan – and it’s all designed to be booze-friendly. There’s a wing “gyoza” that’s actually a mousse-like fish-and-scallop cake inside a boneless chicken wing, and a Chinese doughnut stuffed with prawn meat. Sixty-day scotch fillet is dry-aged in-house, while crispy capelin and Szechuan grilled eggplant are other highlights.

Brisbane

Gum Bistro

Pasta Club, a beloved restaurant in Brisbane’s West End, closed earlier this year. In its place, sommelier Phil Poussart and former Pasta Club chef Lachlan Matheson have launched Gum Bistro, a bright new restaurant decorated with greenery and local artwork. Here, the remit goes beyond pasta: “It’s a bit of everything,” says Matheson, cooked with produce from local suppliers. You might start with a textbook duck liver parfait with Riser sourdough, before moving on to a cold salad of squid, fennel, chicory and lemon. Mains include cabbage-wrapped cobia with zucchini and crème fraîche; Magra lamb rump with sweetbread, beans and radicchio; and an autumn vegetable pot pie with caramelised onion and gruyere. A sweet corn agnolotti with parmesan cream is proving a fan favourite. The wine is equally enticing: Poussart’s by-the-glass list includes Spanish cava, Tasmanian savagnin and a cabernet blend from France’s Loire Valley, while the bottle list offers numerous rare finds, including a Slovenian sparkling.

Perth

South Bird

The spice levels start at medium at new Nashville-inspired diner South Bird, where the essential ingredients are music, fried chicken, spice and community. Two of those elements come together in a community radio station owner Kabir Ramasary has planned for the venue, which is furnished, diner-style, with wooden booths. As for the fried chicken, it starts with breading that’s thick but ultra-crispy, with lots of crunch and plenty of heat, backed by cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, chillies and paprika. Sides of crack salt fries, slaw, hush puppies, mac’n’cheese, potato and gravy, and buffalo cauliflower make for a soul-warming, Southern-classic selection. Drinks are Americana-focused, with non-alcoholics including sarsaparilla and peach and lemon iced teas (you can spike them with a bit of booze if you like). There’s also a small but punchy cocktail list, local beers served on tap, and Australian natural wines.