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Port Melbourne does Modern Australian across a degustation room, a few seafood kitchens and a long line of bayside pubs, and this guide is honest about that mix. It ranks the suburb's Modern Australian rooms by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out. A genuine fine-dining room leads, the hotels and a distillery bar fill out the middle, and each one is named for what it is. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is Shelanous, the contemporary fine-dining room reviewers rate at the top of the suburb, the avocado-lollipop amuse-bouche and a kingfish course beside a seasonal four-course degustation with paired cocktails and a marshmallow finale, a genuine sit-down kitchen. Railway Club Hotel follows, the gastropub reviewers come to for the steak, the grass-fed ribeye and a wagyu porterhouse beside a Bass Strait eye fillet with brandy peppercorn sauce, chunky fat chips and a sticky date pudding, named as the pub it is.
The Clare Castle is the gastropub reviewers rate for the Sunday roast and the seafood, the lamb and beef roast and a Moreton Bay bug Kilpatrick beside garlic prawns, crumbed lamb cutlets and a Black Angus beef ragu pasta, a hotel that earns its place here on the kitchen. Rubira's is the seafood room reviewers come to for the oysters, the oysters Kilpatrick and chilli king prawns beside barramundi spring rolls and a marinara pasta, a genuine sit-down kitchen. The Graham Hotel is the gastropub reviewers rate for the pub classics, the scotch fillet and a wagyu beef schnitzel beside a crispy-skin barramundi, a chicken parmigiana and a meat pie, named as the pub it is.
Starward Distillery & Bar is the whisky distillery bar reviewers come to for the tasting flight and a snack, the whisky flight and a single-barrel paddle beside kangaroo and pork sausage rolls and triple-cooked potatoes, named as the distillery bar it is. Pier Port Melbourne is the seafood bar reviewers rate for the shellfish and the pasta, the chilli mussels and a bay bug linguine beside a seafood linguine, a wagyu beef bolognese, a steak-night special and oysters, framed as the bar it is. The Tipsy Cow - Cocktail Tapas Bar & Beer Garden is a cocktail and tapas bar reviewers come to for the drinks, the handcrafted cocktails like the Coco Loco and Cabana Mama beside a tapas selection and popcorn, a drinking bar that earns its place on the list rather than the kitchen.
The list closes across the suburb. The Cornerstone is a gastropub reviewers rate for the pub mains, the Mexican-style chicken parma and a smash burger beside a crumbed lamb cutlet, a Thai chicken burger and a sticky date pudding, named as the pub it is. Pier 35 Bar & Grill is the bar and grill reviewers come to for the seafood platter, the platter for two and a scotch fillet beside a deep sea dory, Gippsland lamb shanks, a mixed grill and paella, a genuine sit-down kitchen. The Exchange Hotel is a gastropub reviewers rate for the parma and the roast, the chicken parmigiana and a Sunday roast beside calamari, a mushroom arancini and fish and chips, named as the pub it is. And Rex Hotel rounds it out, a hotel reviewers come to for a beer and the room more than the plate, with cold beer, the pool table and free party pies, named honestly as the drinking pub it is.
If one thread here pulls you in, follow it across the city. There is a guide to the best Modern Australian in Melbourne for the citywide picture, and a cross-cuisine tour of the best restaurants in Port Melbourne for the rest of the suburb.
Every room here carries a Curateria Score built from its full review history, then weighted toward its most recent hundred reviews so the order reflects the room as it runs today, not as it ran two years ago. We hold the cohort to this one suburb and a tight inner-Melbourne radius, roughly 15km of the city, and we drop the multi-location chains and national franchises that trade on a logo more than a local following, so what is left reads as the genuine local order. Because a long-running room collects more reviews than a newcomer, we shrink the raw average toward the cohort mean for places with thin review counts, so a handful of glowing reviews cannot leapfrog a room a thousand diners have judged. Modern Australian is a broad tag, so the category gate keeps this cohort to full-service rooms and the pubs and bars that genuinely cook, each named on this page for what it is, with the cafes and dessert shops that also carry the tag left out, so the order reads as the Port Melbourne rooms you would actually book for dinner. The corpus is Victorian and scored; no AI writer ever reads it. The ranking is arithmetic; the words are ours.
Explore more Modern Australian in Port Melbourne across Melbourne on Discover ->
Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a recent-review-weighted quality signal that leans on what diners are saying now, not years ago. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.
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