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Southbank does Modern Australian along the river and around the arts precinct, and the cohort runs from genuine fine-dining rooms to the riverside bars and pubs that do the contemporary plates. This guide ranks them by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out, and names each one for what it is. Here is how they sit this month.
Top of the list is Ludlow Bar & Dining Room, the bar and dining room reviewers rate at the top of the precinct, the fish and chips and a scotch fillet beside a lamb shank, ribs and satay chicken skewers, a sit-down kitchen with a bar. Eureka 89 - Dining & Events follows, the tower fine-dining room reviewers call a standout, the Hiramasa kingfish and an Aquna Murray cod ballotine beside a jasmine-tea-smoked beef, Tasmanian oysters and a chocolate parfait, a genuine sit-down kitchen.
Left Bank Melbourne Restaurant & Cocktail Bar is the restaurant and cocktail bar reviewers rate for the seafood and the bottomless brunch, the seafood spaghettini and oysters beside arancini, a mushroom risotto and a strawberry margarita, a genuine bar-restaurant by the water. Yarra Botanica is a cocktail and wine bar reviewers come to for the pizza with a drink, the sourdough mushroom and pepperoni pizzas and a calzone beside a cheese board and a chocolate and cheese fondue, framed as the bar it is. Hopscotch Melbourne is a gastropub reviewers rate for the burgers and the snacks, named as the pub it is.
Garden Restaurant at National Gallery of Victoria is the gallery dining room reviewers come to for the contemporary plates, the kingfish entree and a grilled barramundi beside a duck main, a chocolate choux dessert and a creme brulee, a genuine sit-down kitchen. Rockpool Bar & Grill Melbourne is the landmark bar and grill reviewers rate for the dry-aged beef, the dry-aged wagyu rib eye and a Pure Black F1 wagyu on the bone beside a chateaubriand, duck-fat potatoes and a burnt-butter tortellini, a genuine sit-down steak kitchen. PJ O'Brien's Irish Pub is the Irish pub reviewers come to for the stew and the roast, the Irish stew and a beef roast beside fish and chips, a spice bag, Irish nachos and mussels, named as the pub it is.
The list closes across the precinct. Waterfront Southgate is the room reviewers rate for the seafood, the salmon Wellington and a Moreton Bay bug risotto beside Kilpatrick oysters, a barramundi with gnocchi, a Black Angus eye fillet and a seafood linguine, a genuine sit-down kitchen. Ponyfish Island is the riverside bar reviewers come to for a pizza with a cocktail, the Lamington espresso martini and house sangrias beside wood-fired pizzas, charcuterie boards and cheese platters, named as the bar it is. Melba Restaurant is the restaurant reviewers rate for the seafood and the carvery, the fresh oysters and shellfish and live-made naan with Indian curries beside sashimi and sushi, freshly carved roast meats and a chocolate fountain, a genuine sit-down kitchen. And EDWIN WINE BAR AND CELLAR rounds it out, a wine bar and cellar reviewers come to for a plate with the list, the steak and fries and an osso bucco pasta beside oysters, a Torta Caprese with pistachio ice cream and a passionfruit martini, framed as the bar 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 Southbank 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 Southbank 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 Southbank 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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