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Five To Try: Regional Victorian Restaurants Worth the Drive
Five To Try: Regional Victorian Restaurants Worth the Drive
Melbourne’s got a lot of good restaurants – but some of the state’s best require a drive out of the city. Here are some of our favourite fine diners in regional Victoria.
Words by Audrey Payne | Published on 13 June 2025
Melbourne’s got a lot of good restaurants – but some of the state’s best require a drive out of the city. Here are some of our favourite fine diners in regional Victoria.
Words by Audrey Payne | Published on 13 June 2025
As someone who’s lucky enough in my role at Broadsheet to eat all over town, I know that some of the state’s best restaurants are in regional Victoria. And I’m willing to travel for food. I don’t have my own set of wheels, so I need to rent a car when I want to travel beyond Melbourne. Luckily there are Avis locations all over Melbourne to pick up a hire car. If I’m taking a group, then I’ll opt for an SUV, but if it’s just me and a friend, I’ll go electric.
If you’re flying in to visit these spots, you can pick up your car from the Avis desk at the airport after you land (and get Qantas points at the same time). Plus, make your rental collection smoother and faster with Avis PreCheck – you can fill out your rental agreement online, so you spend less time at the counter filling out paperwork before you get your keys and go.
Once your car’s sorted, it’s time to plug your destination into your map and hit the road. Here are five spots outside of Melbourne worth visiting for a memorable meal.
Tedesca Osteria, Red Hill
Tedesca Osteria is in a gorgeous early-20th-century weatherboard house on the Mornington Peninsula, by former Gertrude Street Enoteca chef Brigitte Hafner. It’s an easy drive out if you’re coming from the city and a nice opportunity to rent a luxury car to go with the refined setting.
Long lunches are the thing at this picturesque restaurant, and the set menu is built around produce from the restaurant’s biodynamic farm.
Lunch always starts with meze. “There’s always something crunchy, something fried,” Hafner said in 2024. “Maybe there’s some pastry, there’s some cheese, there’s a vegetable, there’s something on the grill.” That’s followed by pasta, something from the woodfired oven, another dish from the grill, and dessert. If you don’t want to drive home right away, why not book a night at one of the accommodation options on the property: Graceburn House or the Glasshouse.
Chae, Cockatoo
Six-seat restaurant Chae might be one of the hardest bookings in the country to get. Chef Jung Eun Chae and partner Yoora Yoon run the restaurant inside their home. They use a lottery system to allocate seats every month, and the fewer people you try to get a table for, the better luck you’ll have – which means you don’t need to rent a huge car to go down for lunch or dinner.
If you’re lucky enough to be chosen, the drive to the restaurant from Melbourne takes you through lush fern gullies and towering mountain ash trees. At Chae you’ll be met with a nourishing Korean meal based around the chef’s own homemade ferments such as kimchi, vinegars and jangs (sauces and pastes) including chosun ganjang, a Korean soy sauce, and doenjang, a fermented soybean paste often likened to miso.
You also get to meet the couple’s black lab, Haru, who’ll come out and bid you a safe trip before you drive back.
Many Little, Red Hill
Many Little is from the team at nearby winery Polperro. It’s led by Sri Lankan-born chef Gayan Pieris (ex-Cumulus Inc). The best part is that you can bring a big group with you and you’ll want to load up a people mover so you can order as many dishes as possible.
The team describes the food as modern Asian- and Sri Lankan-inspired. Pieris’s menu includes whole fried barramundi with idiyappam (soft and pillowy disc-shaped hoppers with thin strands of batter); a number of curries, such as Sri Lankan black pork curry and sour fish curry; and bibikkan (a Sri Lankan coconut cake) with pumpkin and ginger ice-cream.
Plus, if you want to stay on the Mornington Peninsula for a few days, you can easily return your car – thanks to Avis’s one-way car rental option – and pick up a new one when you’re ready to drive back to Melbourne.
Greasy Zoey’s
While the name makes it sound like an American diner, Greasy Zoey’s in Hurstbridge is an eight-seat fine-dining spot from chef-couple Zoe Birch and Lachlan Gardner that opened in 2017. The setting is understated but extremely elegant; it’s worth renting a luxury car, so you can get in a posh mindset on the drive down.
The couple serves an ever-changing menu with a hyperlocal focus. Birch cooks while Gardner works the floor and takes care of drinks. The snacky 12-course meal uses ingredients like locally caught flathead, native grasses, and native seagreens including kelp and seaweed from Southern Seagreens.
Tony Tan’s Cooking School, Trentham
Tony Tan is a living legend. The chef and cookbook author converted an old butcher’s house in Trentham into a home where he raises chooks for fresh eggs, grows Asian produce, and works on his veggie patch and greenhouse.
It’s also where he runs Tony Tan’s Cooking School, where people from the city and elsewhere come to learn from the man himself. Tan’s a natural teacher, and he will put you to work with his hands-on classes, so don’t expect to just watch him cook. At the end you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful lunch that you and your fellow students have all helped to prepare, wines and plenty of conversation. A trip to Tony Tan’s is like visiting an old friend, so it’s best not to overthink it and just opt for a standard car when making the drive down.
Skip the paperwork when you pick up your car rental with Avis PreCheck – just fill out your rental agreement online so you’re ready to go once you hit the Avis counter. Better yet, if you’re a frequent renter, join Avis Preferred for a more streamlined experience.
Words by Audrey Payne
Read the original article published on Broadsheet.
As someone who’s lucky enough in my role at Broadsheet to eat all over town, I know that some of the state’s best restaurants are in regional Victoria. And I’m willing to travel for food. I don’t have my own set of wheels, so I need to rent a car when I want to travel beyond Melbourne. Luckily there are Avis locations all over Melbourne to pick up a hire car. If I’m taking a group, then I’ll opt for an SUV, but if it’s just me and a friend, I’ll go electric.
If you’re flying in to visit these spots, you can pick up your car from the Avis desk at the airport after you land (and get Qantas points at the same time). Plus, make your rental collection smoother and faster with Avis PreCheck – you can fill out your rental agreement online, so you spend less time at the counter filling out paperwork before you get your keys and go.
Once your car’s sorted, it’s time to plug your destination into your map and hit the road. Here are five spots outside of Melbourne worth visiting for a memorable meal.
Tedesca Osteria, Red Hill
Tedesca Osteria is in a gorgeous early-20th-century weatherboard house on the Mornington Peninsula, by former Gertrude Street Enoteca chef Brigitte Hafner. It’s an easy drive out if you’re coming from the city and a nice opportunity to rent a luxury car to go with the refined setting.
Long lunches are the thing at this picturesque restaurant, and the set menu is built around produce from the restaurant’s biodynamic farm.
Lunch always starts with meze. “There’s always something crunchy, something fried,” Hafner said in 2024. “Maybe there’s some pastry, there’s some cheese, there’s a vegetable, there’s something on the grill.” That’s followed by pasta, something from the woodfired oven, another dish from the grill, and dessert. If you don’t want to drive home right away, why not book a night at one of the accommodation options on the property: Graceburn House or the Glasshouse.
Chae, Cockatoo
Six-seat restaurant Chae might be one of the hardest bookings in the country to get. Chef Jung Eun Chae and partner Yoora Yoon run the restaurant inside their home. They use a lottery system to allocate seats every month, and the fewer people you try to get a table for, the better luck you’ll have – which means you don’t need to rent a huge car to go down for lunch or dinner.
If you’re lucky enough to be chosen, the drive to the restaurant from Melbourne takes you through lush fern gullies and towering mountain ash trees. At Chae you’ll be met with a nourishing Korean meal based around the chef’s own homemade ferments such as kimchi, vinegars and jangs (sauces and pastes) including chosun ganjang, a Korean soy sauce, and doenjang, a fermented soybean paste often likened to miso.
You also get to meet the couple’s black lab, Haru, who’ll come out and bid you a safe trip before you drive back.
Many Little, Red Hill
Many Little is from the team at nearby winery Polperro. It’s led by Sri Lankan-born chef Gayan Pieris (ex-Cumulus Inc). The best part is that you can bring a big group with you and you’ll want to load up a people mover so you can order as many dishes as possible.
The team describes the food as modern Asian- and Sri Lankan-inspired. Pieris’s menu includes whole fried barramundi with idiyappam (soft and pillowy disc-shaped hoppers with thin strands of batter); a number of curries, such as Sri Lankan black pork curry and sour fish curry; and bibikkan (a Sri Lankan coconut cake) with pumpkin and ginger ice-cream.
Plus, if you want to stay on the Mornington Peninsula for a few days, you can easily return your car – thanks to Avis’s one-way car rental option – and pick up a new one when you’re ready to drive back to Melbourne.
Greasy Zoey’s
While the name makes it sound like an American diner, Greasy Zoey’s in Hurstbridge is an eight-seat fine-dining spot from chef-couple Zoe Birch and Lachlan Gardner that opened in 2017. The setting is understated but extremely elegant; it’s worth renting a luxury car, so you can get in a posh mindset on the drive down.
The couple serves an ever-changing menu with a hyperlocal focus. Birch cooks while Gardner works the floor and takes care of drinks. The snacky 12-course meal uses ingredients like locally caught flathead, native grasses, and native seagreens including kelp and seaweed from Southern Seagreens.
Tony Tan’s Cooking School, Trentham
Tony Tan is a living legend. The chef and cookbook author converted an old butcher’s house in Trentham into a home where he raises chooks for fresh eggs, grows Asian produce, and works on his veggie patch and greenhouse.
It’s also where he runs Tony Tan’s Cooking School, where people from the city and elsewhere come to learn from the man himself. Tan’s a natural teacher, and he will put you to work with his hands-on classes, so don’t expect to just watch him cook. At the end you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful lunch that you and your fellow students have all helped to prepare, wines and plenty of conversation. A trip to Tony Tan’s is like visiting an old friend, so it’s best not to overthink it and just opt for a standard car when making the drive down.
Skip the paperwork when you pick up your car rental with Avis PreCheck – just fill out your rental agreement online so you’re ready to go once you hit the Avis counter. Better yet, if you’re a frequent renter, join Avis Preferred for a more streamlined experience.
Words by Audrey Payne
Read the original article published on Broadsheet.