THE LOWDOWN · 8 min read

Picks from across Melbourne’s dining scene. The rooms worth your table.

MELBOURNE · DINING · GUIDE
By the curator

The best steakhouse in Melbourne right now

A steakhouse is the grill room: a properly aged cut over fierce heat, an eye fillet or a porterhouse or a tomahawk for the table, a marrow bone, a wedge of cheesecake, a red worth lingering over. It is the format and the fire, the dry-ageing fridge and the carving board, narrower than the broad American table the city has its own list for. Melbourne grills it from Prahran and Port Melbourne through Docklands and the CBD out to Niddrie, Ardeer and Camberwell. We ranked the inner-city rooms diners name for that cut by their Curateria Score and what reviewers keep saying on their most recent visits, with chains and far suburbs left out. Here is the order this month.

Top of the list is Marbl Steakhouse Prahran in Prahran, the high-scoring room reviewers call the best steak in the area at a fair price, the eye fillet and the 350g wagyu rump beside a porterhouse and beef ribs, the staff going above and beyond. Steakhouse Grill 66 Docklands in Docklands follows, the big-volume waterfront room whose eye fillet reviewers say melts in the mouth, the scotch fillet and a land-and-sea platter beside the smoky BBQ short ribs, the view part of the night.

A Hereford Beefstouw in the city is the dry-ageing room, a 45-day cote de boeuf on the bone the signature beside a 1.5kg shared tomahawk and a dry-aged eye fillet tartare, a great setting reviewers come back for. Marbl Steakhouse Port Melbourne in Port Melbourne is the list's highest-scoring room, the eye fillet and the rib-eye the order beside a porterhouse and pork ribs, the customer service on another level. Meatmaiden in the city is the big-volume room reviewers rate for great food in a very cool space, a wagyu F1 striploin and a chopped wagyu tartare with XO beside the grilled house bread with cowboy butter, the vibe immaculate.

Rare Steakhouse Downtown in the city is the room reviewers return to for good food and nice recommendations, a dry-aged rib eye and an eye fillet beside a T-bone and the Bloody Mary oyster shooters, and Butcher's Prime Restaurant in Docklands is the room reviewers call a reminder of why Melbourne cooks so well, a tomahawk and a wagyu scotch fillet beside an eye fillet with cowboy butter and a platter for two, the service attentive. Steakhouse Grill 66 CBD in the city is the room reviewers leave calling it clean and luxurious, a dry-aged rib eye and a tomahawk beside a wagyu rostbiff and lemon-butter scallops, the staff warm and welcoming.

The list closes across the inner ring. Blazed Bar & Grill in Ardeer is the comfortable local reviewers return to for the eye fillet and the 500g rib eye beside beef cheeks, a lamb shank and a sticky date pudding, good portions at a good price. Mjølner in the city is the room reviewers say is unlike anywhere else in Melbourne, a roast bone marrow with a whisky luge beside a tomahawk and a beef short rib, the Norse setting half the experience, Sear Steakhouse in Niddrie is the room reviewers give a thousand out of ten for the steak, an eye fillet and a rump beside a wagyu and a Basque cheesecake, the owner and staff friendly, and Sam's Bar & Grill in Camberwell rounds it out, a room reviewers praise for ambience and range, an eye fillet and beef ribs beside scallops and mac-and-cheese croquettes, the welcome from Sam beyond fault.

How we ranked it

We hold the cohort to a tight inner-Melbourne radius, roughly 15km of the city, and drop multi-location chains and the national brands that trade on a logo more than a local following, so what is left reads as the genuine local order. We blend that quality score with how often and how recently diners are still talking about the place, and we read the snippets for the cut and the grill room itself, the dry-aged beef and the porterhouse and the carving board, rather than the broad American table the American page already covers. The corpus is Victorian and scored; AI reads the reviews. The ranking is arithmetic.

Keep exploring

Explore more Steakhouse across Melbourne on Discover ->

Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a signal computed from its Google reviews with fake reviews removed and a volume weighting that only lowers thin-review scores. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.

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