Open all hours: the restaurants turning Melbourne into a city that never sleeps

If the mark of a civilised city is what it puts into its mouth post-midnight, Melbourne has come a long way in a short time. In the more than half century since the end of the infamous six o’clock swill, Melburnians learnt to drink properly but a slew of new openings — yes, we can call them a bona-fide trend — has seen the city finally getting its post-midnight dining glam on.

“There’s always been a late-night option in Melbourne but it tended to be quite narrow in its offer,” says David Mackintosh, who last year launched The Mayfair, a restaurant and supper club taking its style cues from the clubs of 1920s and ’30s New York and open until 1am five nights a week. “I was thinking about how to pitch The Mayfair and decided that we now do four distinct meal periods: breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. And it was the last two that we really wanted to concentrate on at The Mayfair,” he says.

Let’s not forget the old stagers who flew the flag for late-night dining when all around them the lights went off. Stalactites, that lodestone of Melbourne’s Little Athens precinct, where, since 1979, it has been possible to get a mixed grill and moussaka 24 hours a day. Supper Inn, where excellent Cantonese food in dingy surroundings has been a magnet for the post-work hospitality crew since (almost) time immemorial. And France-Soir, which made so strong a commitment to midnight dining that, for three decades, no person has gone home disappointed that the kitchen packed up early because it was quiet.

The post-10.30pm menu at The Mayfair is the stuff of which comfort dreams are made of: steak frites and terrine, oysters and parfait and a cracking croque monsieur. Down at Bar Tini, the latest adventure from the MoVida crew, a wine bar and snack-centric neighbour to the Hosier Lane mothership that opened at the end of last year, things swing more Spanish. This is precisely the place where you can grab a glass of vermouth and a can of primo tinned seafood and feel mighty sophisticated until 3am on weekends (and 1am on weekdays).

We are open throughout the long weekend! Just like last year we were open for over 8,700 hours and we plan on doing the same this year, being open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A post shared by Stalactites Restaurant (@stalactitesrestaurant) on Jan 25, 2018 at 4:09pm PST

Other marquee names are jumping into the late-night fray. Con Christopoulos of European, Supper Club and Siglo fame has opened Butcher’s Diner, a 24-hour meat-fest where offal, yakitori-style offal and house-made dim sims will soak up your 5am sins, while Guy Grossi swung open the doors on laneway bar Arlechin, where the midnight spaghetti is a beacon of the good food to be had if you stumble down this unprepossessing slip of real estate behind Florentino.

A post shared by Arlechin (@arlechinmelbourne) on Sep 10, 2017 at 3:17am PDT

To that list of newcomers you can also add Twenty Pho Seven, Australia’s first 24-hour pho restaurant opened in November by Midawell Phal, Thai Ho and George Do. Phal and Ho used to run nightclub events and longed for a place where they could tumble post-club for pho’s amazing alcohol-sopping properties – so they opened it themselves.

For the operators who face a staff shortage of crisis proportions even during the daylight hours, it’s another raft of headaches – but the true believers are willing to fight the good fight.