Victoria’s Best Restaurants Have Just Been Crowned, And Regional Victoria Cleaned Up

For anyone still treating regional Victoria as somewhere you drive through on the way to dinner, the 2026 Restaurant & Catering Hostplus Awards for Excellence would like a word.

Regional Victoria dominated the Victorian restaurant awards in 2026. Of Victoria’s 19 restaurant and major-award wins, 12 went to venues outside Melbourne, spanning Daylesford, Bendigo, Mildura, Rutherglen, Geelong and the Bellarine.

The biggest result came from Daylesford, where Kadota took Restaurant of the Year as well as Premium Dining. Elsewhere, Bendigo claimed the steak category, Mildura took breakfast, Rutherglen won cafe dining, and Geelong and the Bellarine appeared across contemporary Australian, family dining and tourism categories.

Kadota made the clearest statement of the night. Aaron Schembri and Risa Kadota’s Daylesford restaurant left with three awards, including Restaurant of the Year, for a dining style grounded in Japanese technique and memory, Central Victorian produce, sake selected by Risa, timber charred in the Japanese tradition and calligraphy from her grandfather on the wall.

Taken together, the results say something fairly simple: some of Victoria’s most awarded dining is now happening well beyond Melbourne. The rest of the list is worth reading with a map open.

Kadota Restaurant, Daylesford

Winner: Restaurant of the Year; Asian Restaurant – VIC; Premium Dining – VIC & TAS

Three trophies went back to Daylesford with Aaron Schembri and Risa Kadota: Asian Restaurant – VIC, Premium Dining – VIC & TAS and, above them all, Victorian Restaurant of the Year. At Kadota, their marriage of Japanese food culture and Central Victorian produce is written into almost everything. Risa grew up in Okayama; Aaron is from Daylesford. Their menus draw on kaiseki without treating it as something fixed, moving through sashimi, house-made tofu and miso, garden produce and sake selected by Risa.

Even the room carries family history. Local timber has been charred using a Japanese technique, while calligraphy from Risa’s grandfather hangs inside.

The biggest prize of the night works a little differently. Restaurant of the Year isn’t a category restaurants can simply enter; it goes to the highest-scoring eligible restaurant across the entire judging process. And this year, the restaurant sitting at the very top of that scorecard was in Daylesford.

1 Camp Street, Daylesford

Brass Monkey Kitchen + Coffee, Mildura

Winner: Breakfast Restaurant – VIC

The breakfast trophy travelled all the way to Mildura. Brass Monkey Kitchen + Coffee occupies a century-old building on Eighth Street, where exposed brick, timber and greenery frame mornings that have become the main event. The venue spent its first six years serving dinner before shifting towards coffee, breakfast and lunch, without losing the wine and beer that make staying on feel entirely reasonable.

That evolution has paid off. In a state with no shortage of fiercely defended brunch favourites, Victoria’s best breakfast is now being served nearly six hours north-west of Melbourne.

149 Eighth Street, Mildura

The Pickled Sisters Cafe, Rutherglen

Winner: Cafe Dining – VIC

The Pickled Sisters has watched Rutherglen change from the same table since 1999. Today, husband-and-wife team Stewart Gilchrist and Marion Hansford run the cafe from a heritage Main Street building, with tables tucked beneath grapevines and a courtyard out back. Scottish-born Gilchrist cooks around North East Victoria’s seasons, making the bread, terrines, preserves, pastries and cakes in-house.

There are pasta nights and cooking classes, lunches that stretch willingly into the afternoon and more than two decades of regulars behind the place. In a region already very good at feeding people, that longevity says almost as much as the trophy.

121B Main Street, Rutherglen

Woolstore Restaurant & Bar, Newtown

Winner: Contemporary Australian Restaurant, Formal – VIC & TAS

Woolstore wears Geelong’s wool history well. Set inside a converted Newtown industrial building, the restaurant keeps the original red brick, old tallowwood and soaring proportions intact, then layers in the firepower. Chef Eli Grubb works over a parrilla grill, sending out modern Australian plates built around Geelong and Bellarine produce, smoke, char and sharp technique.

The accolades have arrived quickly. Woolstore opened in 2024, went on to win Best Contemporary Dining and Overall Best Regional Restaurant at the 2025 Golden Plate Awards, and has now added the R&CA award for formal contemporary Australian dining across Victoria and Tasmania.

Not bad going for a restaurant still in its first two years.

400 Pakington Street, Newtown

Tommy Gunns, Barwon Heads

Winner: Contemporary Australian Restaurant, Informal – VIC & TAS

At Tommy Gunns, Sri Lankan influence meets the Bellarine at the dinner table. Head chef Kalindu Karunasena trained under Allan Eccles and now cooks with produce from the peninsula, house-made breads, stocks and sauces, plus ingredients foraged nearby. The setting keeps things easy: a bright bar, close-set tables and a courtyard under the trees, with enough sophistication to feel special without ever becoming stiff.

Owner Ruaraidh Gunn named the restaurant after his grandfather Tommy, a decorated veteran remembered in the family as a man who loved gathering people around a table. It feels fitting that a restaurant carrying his name has now been recognised for doing exactly that.

60 Hitchcock Avenue, Barwon Heads

Donovans, St Kilda

Winner: European Restaurant – VIC

Some Melbourne institutions do not require reinvention every eighteen months. Kevin and Gail Donovan call Donovans their “house on the beach”, and nearly three decades on, it still feels uncannily like one. There are sandstone fireplaces, family photographs, lamps, shelves crowded with collected objects and the bay sitting beyond the windows; somewhere between an East Coast American beach house and the European home of people who have travelled well and kept the souvenirs. Gail has long treated the interiors as something living, historically redressing the restaurant with the seasons rather than sanding away its eccentricities.

Dinner follows the same logic: Mediterranean flavours, excellent Victorian produce, charcoal cooking and dishes people return for rather than ones designed to disappear with the next menu cycle.

Donovans was Victorian Restaurant of the Year in 2025. A year later, it has the European Restaurant title, no concept overhaul required.

40 Jacka Boulevard, St Kilda

Mavs Greek Restaurant, Geelong

Winner: Family Dining – VIC & TAS

At Mavs, family dining is literal. Milton Mavromoustakos and Julia Ryabova opened the Little Malop Street restaurant in 2017 with the Greek table at its heart: meze passed around, saganaki eaten while it is still blistering, charcoal octopus, moussaka, seafood and slow-cooked lamb arriving in the middle for everyone to get involved.

Mavs had already claimed Victoria’s Greek restaurant title three years running. In 2026, the category changed, but the reason people keep coming back did not.

Sitchu Tip: Order widely. Put everything in the middle. Nobody gets the last piece without a fight.

73A Little Malop Street, Geelong

Bistrot d’Orsay, Melbourne

Winner: French Restaurant – VIC

Across from the Regent Theatre, Bistrot d’Orsay has spent more than 25 years filtering Paris through a distinctly Melbourne lens. Dark timber, soft lighting, a trompe l’oeil ceiling and an enormous vintage French poster set the mood, while the menu moves through Provençal and Mediterranean cooking shaped largely by Victorian produce. The cellar casts a wider net, reaching from Australia and New Zealand to France. Collins Street has newer dining rooms, and louder ones too, but few understand the rhythm of a pre-theatre dinner quite like this one.

184 Collins Street, Melbourne

Enter Via Laundry, Carlton North

Winner: Indian Restaurant – VIC

Before there was a Carlton North dining room, there was Helly Raichura’s Box Hill table. Enter Via Laundry began there with ten-person degustations, eventually drawing a waitlist numbering in the thousands. Raichura, a self-taught cook, built the dinners around regional Indian cuisines and techniques rarely represented in Australian restaurants, drawing on family memory, research and travel rather than a greatest-hits version of Indian dining.

That inquiry continues across five- and ten-course menus today.

The scale has changed. The curiosity has not.

507 Nicholson Street, Carlton North

Buono Restaurant & Bar, Parkdale

Winner: Italian Restaurant – VIC

Victoria’s best Italian restaurant for 2026 is not in Carlton. It is not on Flinders Lane. It is not even inner city. It is in Parkdale.

Buono Restaurant & Bar opened in 2020 with Cinzia Buono, Fabio Magliano and chef Daniele Ruffolo bringing years of Italian and European restaurant experience to Como Parade. Ruffolo’s menu moves between north and south through handmade pasta, twice-cooked octopus, wagyu meatballs with ’nduja and scallops under bottarga, while Magliano, formerly of Michelin-starred Locanda Locatelli in London, handles the wine with equal intent.

Sometimes the suburb wins.

198 Como Parade West, Parkdale

Lexy Restaurant and Bar, Melbourne

Winner: New Restaurant – VIC Metropolitan

Flinders Lane did not exactly need another restaurant. Lexy arrived in 2025 and found room anyway.

The second venture from Cha Ching founder Ken Leung, it draws on a hospitality life that runs from his parents’ decades-old Cantonese restaurant in Kowloon to kitchens at Hong Kong’s Michelin-starred Saint George, Lucy Liu, Red Spice Road and Silks. Here, the lens widens across Asia: lobster XO doughnuts, Japanese-influenced hand rolls, claypot rice and Lao-style grilled chicken share the menu, with fire from the Josper oven doing plenty of the work.

The room goes full Flinders Lane after dark: mirrored ceilings, brushed metal, sculptural lighting and a zero-waste cocktail program rather than anything remotely restrained. A little over a year after opening, Lexy has its first major trophy.

377 Flinders Lane, Melbourne

The Retreat Restaurant & Bar, Newtown

Winner: New Restaurant – VIC Regional

Newtown has nabbed another one. This time, dinner happens inside the restored former Bareena Post Office, now home to The Retreat, a 50-seat restaurant spanning a front bar, dining room and leafy courtyard. Chef Eli Grubb works from a French foundation and lets Geelong and the Bellarine do the rest. Local calamari, Lard Ass cultured butter and regional herbs meet duck liver parfait, goat’s cheese ravioli and steak with béarnaise on a menu that can handle date night, birthday dinner or a Tuesday you decided deserved better.

It is exactly the restaurant you want within walking distance of home. Newtown residents, fortunately for them, actually have it.

9 Retreat Road, Newtown

Prefisso 3088, Greensborough

Winner: Pizza Restaurant – VIC

Victoria’s best pizza restaurant is sitting on a Greensborough corner with the local postcode in its name and very little interest in behaving like an awards darling. At Prefisso 3088, handmade Neapolitan-style bases carry everything from a classic margherita to hot salami and ’nduja, prosciutto, and wild mushrooms with porcini, truffle and gorgonzola. Pasta, Italian wine and a relaxed little dining room keep the whole thing firmly in neighbourhood-restaurant territory.

Which makes the trophy run even better. Prefisso was named Victoria’s Casual Dining Restaurant of the Year in 2025. Twelve months later, it has added the state pizza title too.

1/2 Hopkins Street, Greensborough

Claribeaux on The Bellarine, Curlewis

Winner: Restaurant in a Pub/Club – VIC

“Dinner at the golf club” rarely begins with six signed Andy Warhol prints. At Claribeaux, they hang inside Curlewis Golf Club’s contemporary clubhouse, where the dining room looks across rolling fairways towards Corio Bay and the kitchen takes its cues from France. Sustainable local produce runs through the menu, backed by a broad Australian and international wine list; outside, Le Jardin serves oysters, steak tartare, scallops gratin and fries with béarnaise beneath the open sky.

The club has previously won Golden Plate awards for both casual dining and value. Now Claribeaux has the state title for restaurant dining inside a pub or club. Golf remains entirely optional.

1345 Portarlington Road, Curlewis

Pastuso, Melbourne

Winner: Specialty Restaurant – VIC

More than a decade into life on AC/DC Lane, Pastuso is remains restless.

Peru is divided across coast, Andes and jungle: ceviche and tiradito from the raw bar, meat over parrilla and smoker, pisco behind the bar. Chef Dwi Ayu sends out white fish sharpened with ají amarillo leche de tigre, beef-heart anticuchos, smoked lamb shoulder and O’Connor ribeye, letting Australian produce move through unmistakably Peruvian flavours.

This is not a restaurant surviving on affection for what it was in 2014. Pastuso still feels hungry, and fresh.

19 AC/DC Lane, Melbourne

The Woodhouse Bar and Grill, Bendigo

Winner: Steak Restaurant – VIC

Victoria has no shortage of rooms devoted to expensive beef. This year, Bendigo beat them all.

The defining smell at The Woodhouse Bar and Grill comes from local redgum burning inside the grill. Wagyu, grass-fed beef and regional produce pass over that fire, picking up the smoke that has become a signature of executive chef Paul Pitcher’s kitchen.

There is a dedicated Wagyu Experience for anyone keen to make an evening of it, but the equation is refreshingly uncomplicated: very good meat, local wood, heat. Melbourne’s steak temples will have to share the conversation.

101 Williamson Street, Bendigo

The Q Train, Drysdale

Winner: Tourism Restaurant – VIC & TAS

Lunch gets far more interesting when the dining room starts moving. The Q Train rolls along the heritage Bellarine Railway between Drysdale and Queenscliff while a five-course degustation is cooked in a custom kitchen onboard. Outside the windows, vineyards give way to farmland and Swan Bay; inside, produce from the Bellarine, Geelong and the Otways shapes the menu, backed by local wine and beer.

Australia’s only dedicated rail restaurant could coast on novelty. Instead, it won an award.

2–10 Station Street, Drysdale

The Victorian winners now head to Sydney for the National Awards for Excellence on 26 October. Until then, there are reservations to make.

If this list has you looking beyond Melbourne for your next long lunch, our guide to the best restaurants in regional Victoria goes deeper, from tiny chef-led dining rooms to cellar-door restaurants worth building a weekend around. And with Geelong and the Bellarine collecting so much silverware this year, our edit of the best restaurants in Geelong is an excellent place to continue.