The 127 most influential and delicious restaurants in The Age Good Food Guide

From Korean fine diners and late-night soup specialists through to big-ticket steakhouses, this is the Critics’ Picks list of where and what to eat in Victoria right now.

November 7, 2025

What is a Critics’ Pick?

The 2026 Age Good Food Guide has more than 500 reviews of restaurants, cafes and bars. Of those reviews, there are almost 136 with a Good Food hat – one, two, or the highest pinnacle of three hats – ranging from Korean fine diners and late-night soup specialists through to big-ticket steakhouses.

Hats, of course, represent a level of excellence that makes them a cut above. As always, any venue with a hat or above was reviewed again for this year’s Guide, and our reviewers visited anonymously and paid their own way.

But the more we talk about it, we find that although hatted restaurants are an important part of the conversation, they don’t paint the whole picture of dining in Victoria in 2025.

That’s why this year we’ve expanded our Critics’ Picks (marked by a tick) to include every kind of restaurant. Hatted or not, they’re the places our editors urge you to visit, either to discover something new, to be reminded of how our cities, towns and suburbs have evolved (and are still evolving), or to luxuriate in the pleasure of dining somewhere at its peak.

These are those venues.

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The best place to experience the Good Food Guide is via the Good Food app, with more than 500 reviews including 127 Critics’ Picks. Within the app, you can filter and search reviews and venues via the map. The app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.