Looking to celebrate in style? These are Melbourne’s top fine dining restaurants

Nothing says Melbourne like dinner at celebrity chef Shannon Bennett’s Vue de Monde. Here, from your 55th floor vantage point, you can not only experience one of the city’s best fine dining menus, but you will do it in sleek surrounds with a birds-eye view of all Melbourne has to offer.

The interior is contemporary and modern, with leather booths, romantic lighting and window seats where, if you’re here at the right time, you can catch a stunning sunset. Dining is strictly fancy-vibes-only, although if you’re after a more casual affair, you can prop up the Lui Bar next door. Either way, dinner here will impress any date and knock the socks off any visitor. With a degustation menu that pays homage to fresh Australian produce and European flavour palates, Vue de Monde is the quintessential Melbourne fine dining experience.

If you’re looking to impress, you can’t go past the fine dining institution that is the Flower Drum. This Cantonese stalwart has made some serious white-tableclothed waves in Melbourne’s food scene since it opened its doors 47 years ago, proving that European-style restaurants aren’t the only ones that can play in the fine dining space.

The service here is personable and efficient, with wait staff showing serious skills – it’s worth a visit just to watch them expertly carve a Peking duck. There is plenty of talent on display from the kitchen too, with delicately folded xiao long bao, the crispiest of crispy skinned chicken and beautifully executed seafood dishes such as the wok fried bass groper fillet. Dining in elegant surrounds, the Flower Drum experience showcases the depth and delicacy of Cantonese cuisine in a very Melbourne way.

Ben Shewry’s Attica delights diners with boundary-pushing Australian cuisine which has earnt it a regular spot in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. It is buzzy, lively and almost always guaranteed to have a crowd (be warned, you really need to book ahead).

Local produce iis handled with skilled hands that know how to craft food to be delicious and beautiful, but not pretentious. Attica is a gorgeous affair – with delectable foods, amazing service and a degustation menu that’s rich in flavour and steeped in creativity. Come here, you won’t regret a single bite of it.

Picture the perfect Japanese fine dining experience. If you can see a refined and elegant space with muted colours and romantic lighting, that’s Kazuki’s.

The menu is degustation only, but you have a choice of either five or seven courses, depending on whether it’s a dinner or lunch service. There’s the option to have matched wines and sake, or you can just choose from the extensive, and we do mean extensive, wine list. Either way expect innovative Japanese dishes that make the most of stunning Australian produce.

Tucked away in the back streets of Richmond, you’ll find Minamishima, arguably the city’s best sushi spot. At the counter, take one of the dozen bar seats and watch as sushi master Koichi Minamishima applies his incredible knife skills to turn top-notch seafood, much of it from Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market, into the most precise, not to mention, delicious, sashimi and sushi this town has to offer.

The dining room here is minimalistic, but you’ll feel as though you’ve been transported to a sushi den in the back streets of Kyoto.

Lûmé, in South Melbourne, describes itself as creating “the most delicious magical dining experience” and the restaurant really does put its heart and soul into bringing culinary delight to its diners. Whether you choose the experimental 14-course degustation or the three course a la carte menu, your dinner can include anything from spiny king crab with miso sorghum to wild rabbit with fallen leaves. The kitchen changes its menu every season, making it the perfect way to keep you in touch with nature, in the most delicious way possible.