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Grilled octopus at Tzaki in Yarraville.Credit: Chege Mbuthi
In this year’s Guide, you’ll notice plenty of Greek food. It was a bumper year for tavernas, who parked the lamb and encouraged us to eat our vegetables, as more homespun menus took hold.
You can find a chawanmushi for every day of the week. The savoury custard dominated fine dining this year, showing up everywhere from Ballarat to Hurstbridge.
You’ll also see more Korean words than ever before, thanks to a surge of young restaurateurs keen to show off a broader spectrum of Korean cooking.
That’s just the start.
The 2026 Guide - the 45th! – meets you wherever you are and however you like to eat. The entire Good Food Guide - all 500 reviews – will soon be available on the Good Food app. It’s on call, on demand, searchable, saveable, there’s a map – it is the future, and it has arrived.
Now, the magazine is a little bit different. Consider it your hit-list for eating well in 2026, from slick city bistros to destination diners, food court favourites and hatted icons. It features reviews of 123 essential restaurants that define eating and drinking in the state of Victoria, right now. We’re calling them The Critics’ Picks. There are hats aplenty in the mix, but we also cast the net wider to reflect the way diners are eating.
You’ll see a wider range of scores than ever before. But – numbers aside – the main thing to know is that every single restaurant in there has impressed our reviewers in some way.
The Guide includes comprehensive regional dining round-ups, stretching from Beechworth to Daylesford. They contain tips on where to get everything including a coffee, an excellent baked good, a beer or a full-blown meal.
There’s also a spotlight on cuisines that have been a big part of Melbourne’s past 12 months, including Indian, Indonesian and of course, Greek.
The Age Good Food Guide editors Emma Breheny and Frank Sweet.Credit: Chege Mbuthi
