Where To Find Your Favorite Steak In Melbourne Food Experience?

The old steak has fallen out of favour in recent years. But, as the ethical and environmental impact becomes more apparent, chefs and diners are getting cosier with vegetables than ever before.

Despite this, there are still plenty of spots to find a good grilled steak in Melbourne (instead of steak tartare or American-style smoked beef). At the top spots, you can usually choose your preferred breed, feed (grain or grass), cut, ageing time, condiments and, of course, how you’d like it cooked (no more than medium, please).

But however you customise your steak, such a simple dish relies on the quality of the animal. The good news: Australia raises some of the best beef globally. Victorian farmer David Blackmore brought Wagyu here in 1989 and now counts Thomas Keller (French Laundry, USA) and several other high-profile international chefs as customers.

Then there’s South Australia’s Mayura Station (another pure-bred Wagyu operation), Tasmania’s Cape Grim, Victoria’s O'Connor Beef and many other world-class cattle farms employing ethical, sustainable practices. And it’s all right on our proverbial doorstep.

Australia’s got a hard-earned rep for producing some of the best beef in the world. But, unfortunately, our track record at cooking the stuff hasn’t been quite as golden, with “grilled to within an inch of its life” a common approach, historically. Thankfully, Melbourne’s restaurants are catching on to what many have known for years – that when it comes to premium cuts, fresh is not always best.

 Dry-ageing, the longer, the better, has finally taken off, and the result is tender steaks packed with meaty flavour, worthy of the noble beasts from whence they came. So if you need a red meat fix, here’s our list of ten of the best places in Melbourne to get yours. These are by no means the only places in town throwing a rump on the grill, but they’re our go-to for every budget and occasion.

Steak In Melbourne Food Experience

Just because you're mostly confined to your home doesn't mean you can't still get your hands on Melbourne's best steaks.

Many of Melbourne's fine purveyors of grilled steaks are still operating and dishing out the good stuff while lockdown restrictions are in place.

France Soir

These guys have been nailing joie de vivre longer than most, dating back to 1986, to be precise. France Soir’s classic entrecôte steak is cradled in a helping of fried and smothered in a ridiculously lush béarnaise sauce. It's stood the test of time as a frontrunner in the Melb dining ranks.

Macelleria

Macelleria has been touted as Australia’s most desirable meat restaurant. The Macelleria team is completely transparent about where their cuts hail from.

Rockpool Bar & Grill

Right after passing the diligent oyster shucker, one of the first things you notice is the meat locker. Large sides of beef hang on display, and there's the glint of a mean-looking slicer.

This is why we love Rockpool. 

You can come for the view (over the Yarra and the nightly flame show), you can come for the ambience (soft lights and savvy staff), or you can come for the award-winning brand. But you can’t fail to be impressed by the beef. There’s no escaping that this is a steakhouse. The walls are decorated with gorgeous photographs of cattle, and the smell of the open grill is enchanting. 

But while the beef is impressive, we’d suggest you don’t overlook the rest of the menu, from twelve-hour pork belly with mustard fruits and aged balsamic to the lobster omelette with prawn sauce. This is Neil Perry’s Melbourne extension of the Rockpool brand (which has been part of the Urban Purveyor Group since 2016), and it’s a great way to have an elegant evening. 

Large numbers of diners bring bubbly murmurs, and groups range from casino goers to bright young things gearing up for a big night out. From the floor-to-ceiling cabinets of wine to the huge flavours of the grill, this is a considerable experience in the best possible way.

A Hereford Beefstuow

This Nordic-inspired steakhouse serves up deliciously-aged local steak from their custom-built ageing facility in the Adelaide Hills. A Hereford Beefstuow combines great food with beautiful interiors and ridic attention to detail.

Rockpool Bar & Grill

If restaurant years could be measured like dog years, Rockpool would have settled into a comfortable if unexciting middle age, more 'nice' than 'knockout'. But not only has Neil Perry’s clubbish, masculine steak den seen off so many other restaurants that once glittered on the Crown promenade before fading away, but it had also maintained – even surpassed – the standards that sent the town a-twitter when it opened in 2007.

You could say it’s surfed the produce-driven zeitgeist – Perry being the original Mr Produce-Driven, whose menu-adorning quote about serving only the finest produce isn’t a cynical bit of PR spin. Rockpool is best-known for its beef – dry-aged, grass-fed, wood-grilled, reliably sensational – but the lengthy menu tips the balance favouring a seafood obsession.

The 'four raw tastes of the sea', a signature dish that debuted with the restaurant, remains a gob-smacking quartet: kingfish dressed in a smoked oyster; ocean trout with mild harissa; tuna with a flicker of ginger and coriander; scampi ceviche. 

The tuna’s underseasoned aside, it’s a powerful statement about the beauty of top ingredients handled with minimal fuss. There’s linguini, slithery strands of hand-cut silk in pasta form, with sweet outbreaks of spanner crab and an Asian-accented slosh of chilli-spiked prawn oil. And fat nubbles of scampi tail nestled into a creamy blanket of soft polenta with pine mushrooms and sage, bringing a taste of the season. Simultaneously comforting and sensational.

Charcoal Grill On The Hill

Steak and red wine are a match made in gastronomy heaven, and this Kew establishment knows it. Think grain-fed, mid-range marble score Wagyu beef and grass-fed South Gippsland and Tassie beef. 

They also have some pretty stunning Wagyu MS 9+ porterhouse from time to time, and when they do, it’s served up with cos lettuce and vinaigrette dressing, shredded cabbage and French fries.

Fitzroy Town Hall Hotel

It has been McCoppin, Griff’s Wine Pub and Purple Turtle. Originally, though, it was called the Town Hall Hotel. Now owners (and husband and wife) have transformed it again. They looked through historical photographs of the building before they renovated it, and they have loosely returned the pub to what it was.

There is still a casual front-bar area, two separate dining rooms, a wine cellar and an upstairs area. The front bar and main dining room have been redone in shades of deep blue, with charcoal-stained wood panels, textured wallpaper and tartan light shades. The second, more casual dining room (known as “the conservatory”) is filled with light and greenery to reference what was once a courtyard garden.

The wine cellar is untouched and can still be reserved for private dining. Upstairs there’s a large marble bar, a lounge area and a small public dining section. There’s also another private dining space and a small balcony.

The cuisine is a blend of French techniques with Australian barbecue. Donovan trained with a French-born UK chef in the ’90s (as did his head chef, although more recently). A red-gum wood-fired barbeque is used for grilling a variety of meat, chicken and seafood.

La Luna

Melbourne’s carnivores should already be well acquainted with Adrian Richardson’s Carlton establishment, where meat is butchered and aged on-site for 60-days. While everything from La Luna's rump to rib eye is always a hit, they even still serve a 200g Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon, with green beans and pepperoni. They also do a 900g steak served on the bone if you're feeling extra ambitious—size matters.

The Lincoln

Pubs are, by their very nature, relics of times past. We imported them from Britain, and to this day, their core values remain the same: good booze, hot meals, ace banter and good times. The majority of us might not be slaving down at the quarries any longer, but even nine-to-fivers with white-collar hands want nothing more than to sink a cold beer after a long day of data entry.

As a result, it takes a deft touch to update a pub without ruining it. Still, at the Lincoln, they slipped in the excellent wine list, an exciting collection of craft brews and a bistro menu that wouldn’t look out of place on white linen with candlelight with surgically precise service. Unfortunately, nothing that people loved about this historic Carlton pub, established in 1854, has been disturbed, and the new features seem like they’ve always been there.

Forget the teeth-meltingly acidic sauv Blancs that used to pass as a house pour. Here, you can get a grassy yellow Western Australian gewurtz riesling that is light, fresh and floral, or maybe an oaky chardonnay from Beechworth made with indigenous yeasts. This is a pub with wine bar sensibilities. Publican Iain Ling even bought himself a nifty corkscrew that lets him pour glasses from individual bottles by piercing the cork but not opening it.

Vlado’s

Fifty years with no updates is rare in the hospitality industry. But Vlado’s, an iconic family-run steakhouse, is so well-regarded that it hasn’t needed a makeover since opening in 1964.

The tablecloths are crisp white. Miscellaneous copper bowls hang from the ceiling. 

There are no windows – just walls of archaic photos of cows, juxtaposed against images of the international presidents, sportspeople and movie stars who have visited the joint over the past half-century. Of course, they all had the privilege of meeting the late Vlado Gregurek, the founder and steak perfectionist.

His son Michael has taken the reins and ensures each patron has a welcoming, seamless experience. Longstanding waiters trained by the legend stand night after night behind a glass cabinet filled with the highest quality Australian meat. Wearing white gloves, they handle each piece with care and grace.

After a pork-and-beef sausage, a plate of liver, pork neck and burgers, your only selection in the four-course carnivorous affair is your preferred cut of steak. A black tray is brought to each table with a raw chunk of rump, fillet and porterhouse. You specify which hunk takes your fancy and how you’d like it cooked. From blue to well-done, it will undoubtedly be perfect. You’ll get a light salad, but that’s the only deviation from the theme.

There has been one small change in 50 years, and that's the dent in your wallet. Each guest is up for a hefty $105. And that’s before considering the list of ferocious reds from Penfolds, Wynns, Leeuwin Estate and other benchmark producers. But where else can you get such nostalgia and a consistently solid feed?

Steak Ministry

As the name may suggest, the Steak Ministry team knows what they’re doing when it comes to a solid hunk of meat. 

They’ve got their hands on Australia’s best wagyu (Sher wagyu, 400-day grain-fed), as well as export-quality Black Angus grass-fed cuts. They also have a special ‘Super Steaks’ menu, where the Executive chef selects your piece of prime beef for you. 

Railway Club Hotel

You know all about the Railway if you can remember what “fancy” pub steakhouses were like in the 1980s. The dining room sports maroon carpets, white paper-on-cloth covered tables, and ’70s house brick walls crowded with framed netball heroes, jockey colours and Don Bradman driving for the boundary.

 It’s packed even on a Tuesday, families next to groups of businessmen in shirtsleeves next to tradies in hi-vis. The beer and Barossa shiraz flow like a river, carried by chatty servers in ill-fitting blacks three to a hand, trays be damned. But what you might not expect for this historical pub reenactment is the quality of the food.

These steaks are among the best of any restaurant in the city. They’re dry-aged for a minimum of 20 days, expertly chargrilled and served on giant plates accompanied by mustard service, three kinds of butter and little copper saucepans of red wine jus. Around the other side of the pub (or through the toilets if you’re being sneaky), the public bar has TVs playing the footy, trots and doggies. 

The lovely ladies behind the bar know the names of the regulars and remember faces years later. It’s full in here for happy hour, with an older crowd swilling $3 pots of Carlton. A chalkboard above the bar advertises cheap counter meals, and like one of the bartenders says, it’s like stepping into a time warp. Some of the staff have been here for years.

Mpd Steak Kitchen

MPD Steak Kitchen’s head chef was group executive chef at Vue de Monde. The 250-strong wine cellar, which floats above the bar in a climate-controlled fish tank, was filled, formerly of Attica and currently of Bar Liberty (and twice named Australia’s Best Sommelier).

Its owners poured more than $3 million into the former nightclub. It’s fitted out with clam-shaped leather banquettes, dark-wood tables with brass inlays, and a Grillworks Infierno, an American-made wood-fired grill whose flames touch almost everything on the menu. The restaurant uses wood-fire only, no charcoal. Instead, it burns native Australian ironbark and mallee and goes through a tonne of wood a week.

The focus, as the name suggests, is beef. Premium cuts come from brand-name suppliers such as David Blackmore, Rangers Valley Black Market and O’Connors. Along with the tomahawks and hanger steaks, some more unusual cuts are on offer, such as the Pope’s Eye steak (from the cow’s hip).

And lettuce also gets passed over the grill, as does the baba ghanoush – eggplants are roasted each morning. The barbeque sauce is also prepared over wood, with onions, chillies and garlic charred and poured over spiced creamed corn.

The huge cellar features wines from as near as the Mornington Peninsula and Napa, San Juan and Hungary. In addition, there are more than 40 bourbons on the menu.

Angus & Bon

The new steak house/gastropub in Prahran has some serious meat on the menu. Cooked over a wood-fired grill by a former Rockpool sous chef, these steaks are ideally charred, a whiff of wood smoke permeating the tender meat. 

The O’Connors Gippsland 28-month-old, grass-fed rib eye is presented sliced from the bone, which is still on the plate and begging to be picked up and gnawed. This thing has also been dry-aged for a minimum of 30 days, giving the fat that incredible bacon-like quality that makes congestive heart failure seem worth it.

Grill

Florentino is the Melbourne hub of cucina Italiana. It's an institution recognised for close to a century as one of the city’s finest Italian restaurants. Since 1999, the Grossi family – led by chef Guy – has been behind the entire operation (including The Cellar Bar and Ombra Salumi).

Grill offers a fast-paced alternative to the formality of its older sister’s dining rooms. It had a strong timber and brass refit in 2016, courtesy of Mills Gorman Architects. One side of the room pairs dark-wood tables and chairs with striking lampshades. The other features hand-shaped brass wall cladding and chocolate-coloured leather banquettes.

But it’s in the open kitchen that things changed the most. It packs a charcoal-burning Josper oven and an Asado grill, bringing steaks into even sharper focus than before. The selection includes O’Connor hanger steak and the John Dee Angus “Big Rib for Two”. The Josper also gives a nice char to market fish with Pantelleria capers and marjoram.

Resist jumping straight to mains, though. Like any self-respecting Italian restaurant, there’s a strong selection of antipasti, including duck-liver parfait with fig jam and Giardini (flatbread) with black cabbage, lard and pecorino. And pasta, of course.

To match each stage, there’s a wide range of aperitivos; pricey wines stored in a vacuum-sealed Coravin system so you can try by the glass; and an Italian-dominated bottle list as long as the history of Florentino itself.

The Recreation Bistro

Every time a pub is developed into apartments, a fairy dies. The story across inner Melbourne is where old boozers are being developed to within an inch of their lives (next on the chopping block: the old Sarah Sands Hotel on Sydney Road, RIP).

At the Recreation Bistro, however, there’s an alternative narrative being played out. The massive dining room, home to Sunday afternoon roasts and live bands, was carved off by developers, but the lovely front bar was left blessedly alone. 

It’s been turned in subsequent years into various operations, all serving the dark arts of hospitality (Raymond Capaldi had it for a while as Marmalade & Soul, and more recently, it was Charlie’s restaurant).

The thing is, it still looks like a pub with its broad corner verandah, wrought-iron posts and red brick interior walls. In short, it means the latest crew to tackle this gorgeous but apparently troublesome spot near the Edinburgh Gardens are probably more on the money than their predecessors.

The Recreation Bistro is smart pub dining without the pub. Sure, you can pop by for a drink; sure, it has a modern-style bottle shop where you can drink a searching, global and local list either in the park (the candy-pink Stuart Proud rosé has been a popular feature on the dog oval this summer) or in situ for a mark-up. 

Meatmaiden

Meatmaiden is an amazing venue. The dark neons and portentous face of the maiden looming from the entrance set the tone for what’s inside. In no uncertain terms, this is a meat dungeon.

O’Connor steaks hang dry-ageing in the entrance, large butchers scales make for an ideal centrepiece, and framed scenes of a dark maiden wielding various cleaving tools create the perfect environment for consuming some of the best quality meat in Australia. (Alternatively, get your fix at sister venue Meatmother). Smoke permeates the menu, whether it’s in the form of a smoked yoghurt for the kingfish, a charred corn mash, or the 20-hour smoked Rangers Valley 5+ score brisket. There is much pride in the product at the helm, which is reflected in the cut's depth of flavour and quality. 

The aforementioned dry-aged O’Connor pasture-fed sirloin and the big Rangers Valley tomahawk ribeye served on the bone are must-try for meat enthusiasts. The style of service treads the line nicely between relaxed and refined. You can perch at the bar for a drink before dinner or a few after. Cocktails are nice twists on classics, such as a smoked Old Fashioned or caffeinated Manhattan. The beer list heroes some of Australia’s best breweries.

Butchers Diner

Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four freaking hours, seven days a week, is how long Con Christopoulos keeps his new CBD venture open. It’s a compelling reason to grab dinner late or have a steak for breakfast. So please welcome Butchers Diner to the growing ranks of venues keeping the Melbourne CBD up all night.

Simon Poole has been a longstanding meat-obsessed member of the European Group, breaking down the animals and churning out all things cured and aged for venues such as the City Wine Shop, the European, Kirk’s and French Saloon, is now heading up Butchers Diner.

While the menu is meat-centric, it is not as predatory as it may first appear. 

You’ll clap eyes on a cabinet taking up the entire back wall filled with hanging meats when you walk in. Sadly, it’s stock for all the other restaurants, but the offering in the diner is compelling in its own right. There is a definite European lean on the menu, but Japan, America, and China have touched. Burgers starting from $9.50, made up of cuts of the day, sit alongside lightly battered, sesame-spiked Japanese fried chicken ($12) comprised of marinated dark meat, Kewpie mayo and piquant pickled daikon. 

There are skewers of offal ($7.50 for 2) cooked over Japanese white charcoal and come unapologetically chewy, bouncy or irony (and depending on the cut, served medium); and you can get a soft, spiced house-made blood sausage and curried egg bap ($10). 

Plus, there’s the daily one-plate special that could be anything from a Carolina style barbecue pork with 'slaw and cornbread or crispy skin confit duck with pickled vegetables and a sweet chilli jam. Each of these items stands up on there, but we’d advise coming with a few friends and ordering worldwide.