Nine of the Best Melbourne Food & Wine Festival Events That You Can Still Get Tickets To

Stacks of this year’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival events involve international and interstate collaborations, where chefs, bartenders and owners fly over to Melbourne to work with local hospitality venues to create short but unique drinking and dining experiences. One to particularly look forward to is happening at Afloat. Here, teams from two of Sydney’s best Mexican restaurants, El Primo Sanchez and Ricos Tacos, are joining forces to throw a huge taco and tequila party on Thursday, March 21.

For $85 per person, punters will get two hours of unlimited tacos from the Rico’s crew — including both signature tacos and one-off creations made just for the Taco and Tequila Party — as well as a welcome cocktail from El Primo. If you want, get yourself a few more margaritas or tequila flights, then spend the rest of the night dancing to DJ sets on the water beneath disco balls and fairy lights.

Image: Jake Roden.

Just over 30 years on from its 1993 debut at the MCG, the massive communal feast known as the World’s Longest Lunch is next set to take over Kings Domain on Friday, March 15 as a part of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. And this time around, it’ll feature the culinary stylings of Melbourne’s hospo juggernaut Andrew McConnell (Gimlet, Cutler & Co, Supernormal, Builders Arms Hotel, Marion).

After transforming Australia’s contemporary dining landscape, he’s now set himself a huge challenge to serve a one-off three-course lunch to over 1700 people. That’s no easy feat. All the guests will take a seat at the 600-metre-long table that winds along Kings Domain (hoping to the weather gods that Melbourne’s weather doesn’t show its ugly side) to experience this yearly event together. With McConnell at the helm, this might just be the best one yet.

One of the most exciting in-restaurant events during this year’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival has got to be at Atria, high up within the Ritz-Carlton. From Tuesday, March 19–Saturday, March 23, Executive Chef Michael Greenlaw will be joined in the kitchen by the famed Michelin two-starred Chef Kanji Kobayashi. Kobayashi runs Villa Aida, one of the very best restaurants in the world, and is known for turning seasonal vegetables into spectacularly delicious and visually stunning dishes.

He is working with Greenlaw, plus some of Victoria’s most sustainable harvesters and growers — and graziers and fishermen as well — to create a one-of-a-kind six-course feast. Diners will have to fork out a hefty $390 for the food and then choose if they want to go for wine pairings on top of that. It isn’t cheap, but a dining experience like this is almost unheard of in Australia.

One of the biggest installations hitting Federation Square during the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival is Dan’s Diner. The festival has teamed up with booze retail behemoth Dan Murphy’s to build an old-school US-style diner right in the centre of the city that’ll run from Friday, March 15–Sunday, March 24.

For those ten days, renowned chefs and bartenders — all named Dan — will take over the pop-up, reinventing classic diner dishes and drinks. This will include Dan Hunter (Brae), Daniel Puskas (Sixpenny) and Daniel Wilson (Yakimono). Each of these Dans has a totally different culinary style, so we’re pumped to see how each reinvents the diner genre. For beverages, Daniel Docherty (Commis) has also made a few cocktails just for the event — expect refreshing summer sips and some classic diner-inspired booze options.

Image: Kristoffer Paulsen.

As Persian New Year (Nowruz) is overlapping with this year’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, the team at Free to Feed has decided to throw a huge food- and tunes-filled party. On the night of Wednesday, March 20, Free to Feed’s Fitzroy North site will be transformed by Iranian immigrants and refugees as they cook up a traditional three-course dinner and play a heap of live music.

The special Nowruz event will be somewhat of a cultural exchange, where guests will hear stories, jam to Persian music and learn more about the culturally significant New Year traditions of the Persian people. Tickets to the party will not only get you a great midweek night out, but the profits will help Free to Feed support people seeking asylum, new migrants and refugees with training and meaningful employment.

Image: Sam Biddle.

The World’s Longest Lunch has long been a staple of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival program, led by some of the city’s top chef talent during its time. But for the third year running, we get to meet its younger, hipper and perhaps even more Melbourne sibling: the World’s Longest Brunch.

At Kings Domain on Saturday, March 16, expect a sumptuous three-course brunch feast helmed by heroes of contemporary Indian cuisine: Harry Mangat, Helly Raichura and Mischa Tropp. Your tastebuds are in excellent hands as you sit down to this epic feed, with each chef taking one of the three courses. The $125 ticket includes a glass of prosecco on arrival, plus you can order and pay for further drinks throughout the morning — just be sure to bring your credit card as the event is cashless.

Image: Shelley Horan.

Melbourne cake and pastry lovers are spoilt for choice when it comes to 2024’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. There are heaps of events that showcase some of Melbourne’s best bakeries and patisseries, but one we are most keen on is happening at St Kilda’s Stokehouse.

From 6.30pm on Monday, March 18, the teams from Stokehouse and Tokyo Lamington will serve a one-off five-course degustation that’s all about desserts. Diners will head to the seaside restaurant just before sunset, nabbing a welcome drink to sip on while the sun goes down at St Kilda Beach. Following the bevs, Stokehouse Group Pastry Chef Ash Smith (ex-Aria, Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spice Temple) and Eddie Stewart (ex-Black Star Pastry) of Tokyo Lamington will plate up and chat through each of the five dessert dishes they have created for the sweet night out.

Imagine a two-day bake sale stocked with a heaving array of treats from some of the city’s best-loved bakers, tart masters and pastry icons. Well, that’s exactly what’s in store for you when the second Baker’s Dozen takes over Fed Square as part of 2024’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. From Saturday, March 23–Sunday, March 24, you’re invited to sink your sweet tooth into a one-stop pop-up shop showcasing mouthwatering wares from a lineup of legends.

Expect everything from buns and babka to croissants and canelés — with plenty of brand-new exclusive creations in the mix, too. Among the culinary artists showing off their goods from 11am each day, you’ll find Falco, Baker Bleu, Kudo, Monforte, Tarts Anon, The Flour and Black Star Pastry, to name a few. Some of Melbourne’s best bakeries and cake shops are in this incredible lineup for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.

Image: Shelley Horan.

Japanese and Peruvian cuisines have intertwined for over 100 years, leading to the creation of a new fusion cuisine known as Nikkei. It combines both cultures’ produce and cooking techniques to craft new dishes and traditions that are bursting with colour and flavour. To celebrate this unique cuisine and teach Melburnians more about it, Hajime Horiguchi of Warabi and Alejandro Saravia of Farmer’s Daughters are teaming up to create a ten-course Nikkei degustation as a part of this year’s Melbourne Food & Wine Festival.

Diners will head to Warabi (one of the best omakase restaurants in Melbourne) in W Melbourne (one of the best hotels in Melbourne) to try this one-off dining experience on Tuesday, March 19. For $300 per person, each guest will get a seat at the omakase bar, where they’ll be served ten courses that have been dreamt up by both chefs.

Image: Dasha Kud