A chic, small, yet vibrant modern restaurant located in the heart of Fitzroy! Once again, we…read morebrought our team member to dine here with us as a thank you gesture, and we were honestly proud of our choice. The food is undeniably good and their service is top notch! The friendly staff have impressive skills with carrying the dishes. We ordered quite a lot of food and they did not disappoint! Marion is a great little bar to visit during the day that you can nibble through as you enjoy your wine sipping session. Their wine collection is absolutely CRAZY - come visit and find out yourself!

All hail the King of Hospo!…read more Andrew McConnel, or A-Mac as I like to call him (as if to imply we are best buddies, which we totally aren't) has done it again with Marion. Serving up an ever changing menu of seasonal tasty plates and a wine list that makes me excited to be alive, Marion is the kind of place I wish was my local. Fitzroy is fast becoming THE wine bar suburb of Melbourne with Bar Clarine, Bar Liberty, Hell of the North and the ever lovable and reliable Enoteca all serving up terrific wine by the glass and bottle along with solid food offerings. If you wanted to you could jump around multiple venues in a night having a glass and a bite at each, a kind of progressive dinner. But back to Marion... it's lovely. The food and wine is top notch but what I really want to tell you about is the service. It's friendly, knowledgable and efficient. Each guest is made to feel special but not fawned over and the pace of the experience is perfectly suited to what you're in the mood for. Up for some wine nerd chat? You've got it! Want to be left alone so you can stare in to your eyes of your beloved? No worries! Want to be told what to order and drink so you can be delighted and surprised? Easy. Waiters who can read what you need, and give it to you, are as rare as hens teeth, but A-Mac attracts some of the best staff in this city and it's always a pleasure to dine in any of his establishments because of this. 5 stars.

Food was FKN brillliant!…read more Service was sucky in a great way. Ambiance was a big turn on!

One of the best meals I've had in a long time!…read more I'm usually not a fan of the set menu, as you tend to not get enough food (for my large appetite) and never the dishes you want, but boy oh boy was this set menu the bomb dizzly. There were six of us and this is how it played out: Charcuterie plate with endless warm bread - you know that I wiped that terrine bowl clean! Cured salmon - flower petal garnishes win hearts! Deconstructed beef bourguignon - cooked for 48 hours and oh so tender. Mussels and frites - I'm a mussels freak! Dessert - sorbet served with fresh berries and meringue, topped with crumbed shortbread - I have been thinking a lot about this dish since last week! Creme Brulee - wasn't as good as the other dishes. Then just when you think there couldn't possibly be any more... Cheese platters! Drinks not included (obvs) but they have a killer cocktail list and would probably shake you up anything you wanted. Staff were fun and attentive. Take me back!

Wine. Charcuterie. Cheese. Bread. Perhaps the greatest foods ever invented?…read more Gertrude Street Enoteca provides all of these things in very generous proportions, and it's hard to declare which of these is the best; they're all good. The wine selection is always interesting, with some great options by the glass and even more by the bottle. It's hard not to end up buying a bottle to take home once you've tried something new and intriguing. The food is perfect drinking food, rich and good for sharing. There's the likes of smoked salmon with crème fraîche, eel rillettes and cured meats, served with mountains of super fresh baguette to ensure you have plenty in your stomach to soak up all that vino.

Sherry is no longer an old lady's drink, it's making a comeback. That's what I heard on the…read moregrapevine anyway. The Enoteca is all elegance and class and this is where I tasted the goddamn best sherry ever. Not knowing much about sherries, but realising that I would like to know more about it, I came in here and asked the bartender what kind of sherries they have. The bartender reeled off a whole string of words that I did not understand, but I did gather that, on the most simplistic level, I could choose between dry, medium or sweet sherry. Like the fence-sitter that I can be, I went for a medium sherry. And I tell you what, it was beautiful. I wanted to buy a bottle of it to take home with me, but at $15 a glass, I knew I didn't have the funds for the full bottle. Still, sitting in the cosy and intimate bar space surrounded by the best bottled grapes known to Melbourne, I took pleasure in the moment and god knows I sipped the %^# out of that drink and savoured every note, scent by cent.

Holy moly, but Bad Frankie is so Good…read more If you want to try a whole bunch of Australian craft spirits, this little bar off Smith St is the place to be. If you want to supplement your imbibing with jaffles, then you're really going to be thrilled. I started my evening at Bad Frankie with a fish finger jaffle and a gin & tonic. (Note: the fish finger tartare also contains gin.) I ended it (after five or so cocktails and a lamington jaffle for dessert) with a nip of local scotch, because some places give f**k-off mints but Bad Frankie gives f**k-off nips. As if I could have loved them any more. I think I tried every gin cocktail on their list, including a couple of all-Australian negronis now that a couple of distillers are making local versions of Campari (with exceptional results). There's no better time to be an Australian excited about local craft spirits, I tell you what, and there's no better place to visit if you want the people behind the bar to be as excited as you are. I can't wait to come back.

An oozy cheesy hot mess of a jaffle is the kind of thing you want to eat at the end of a big boozy…read morenight. I love that Bad Frankie offers a wide variety of them, including a lamington jaffle (!), so you can pre-load on them while drinking. No more regrettable late night eats - just do it early in the night and you won't feel the need to double down on a second dinner! The booze selection at Bad Frankie is glorious. There's loads of locally crafted spirits along with a tidy selection of wine and beer. The real appeal though is coming and trying a line up of liquor from Australia in their tasting flights. 5 x 10ml pours is a fun way to start the night, right? Pro tip: sign up for a masterclass if you want to enhance your booze knowledge.

Ordered a Negroni and it was watered down or missing a key component. The bar manager came out to…read moreapologise and serve another. It was a sip. The steak was 150gram max plus surcharge. Oh and when you pay your bill 10^ surcharge on Saturday. $180 for next to not much. Would have gone to fine dining instead.

Would of been good had the waiter not dropped a full kettle of boiling tea on me, not apologised or…read moregiven a shit and then overcharged me.

This used to be a night club, and honestly, I am totally over nightclubs, simply because they are…read moreloud, crowded, and can be impossible to enter at times. Well, this is no longer the case here. In fact, this place not only opens much earlier but it has an awesome atmosphere. Actually, I don't even think I can consider it to be a nightclub anymore, but rather a cocktail bar, and a pretty awesome one at that. Not surprisingly, there are references to books, and some pretty awesome books at that, all over the place. Oh, and not only do they also have beer available, and the service is also pretty awesome.

Amazing ambiance and service. The details of this bar are incredible. Definitely not a place to go…read moreoften, but a really cool spot to experience and take other people to. The menu is wildly inventive and requires a bit of explanation (in which the servers do exceptionally well). Definitely a must-stop-by spot if you're visiting Melbourne.

Hidden gem - a little off the beaten track but well worth the effort…read more Great selection of wines with full bar available should you need it. Lots of excellent small plates.

Oui Oui! Kirk's is a lovely escape in the centre of Melbourne. If you're longing for your next…read moreEuropean holiday, then a visit here for glasses of wine and shared plates of cheese, charcuterie and other wine-friendly foods, will help tie you over until you purchase that plane fare. Forget the fact that the menus are written in English and the waiters have that Aussie twang, if you squint hard enough you could be on a Parisian street corner watching the world go by as you drink glasses of Chablis. A lovely spot for a date or a catch up with a friend, but probably not the place for a large gathering as seating is minimal. Service is efficient and non-obtrusive. They're happy to load up your table with eats and then drift past when your glass is looking low. There's always some daily specials that are a little more substantial if you want to stick around for dinner, but my pick is to come here for a few nibbles and a glass or two before moving on to another venue.

What a lovely little fromagerie in bustling Carlton. We decided to come here for a snack before…read morelunch and ended up gorging on so much cheese and charcuterie that we didn't need lunch afterward. The staff were very friendly and knowledgeable. The ambiance is relaxed, and it's awesome to check out the huge glass display of hundreds of cheeses when you walk in. There are so many different types of cheese pairings and flights, with beer, wine, whiskey and even sake and cognac. They even do fondue, frittatas, pates and baked cheese dishes. We ordered a wine and cheese pairing and a side of prosciutto, honeyed burrata and some fresh bread. The cheese pairings were divine, a great way to sample mostly Victorian cheeses and wine but a few amazing French ones in there too. The burrata had a bit too much honey on it for my liking but it's all a matter of preference. There's also a huge space upstairs, and they do cheese trivia nights and special dinners like a Vietnamese and cheese meal (I'm so curious how those can really go together?!), I was bummed we don't actually live in Melbourne to take advantage of the fun events. If we're back in the area, we'll definitely come back!

This was such a fun and unique experience - such a great way for four friends to get together over…read moregood food and wine. Our table ordered 2 x wine flights, 1 x sparkling wine flight, a 5 x cheese board (too much for one person but oh my god that Gorgonzola!) and a mix of cold cuts and extras with the help of the staff. The atmosphere is cosy and friendly. The staff were friendly as well; one struggled with the tasting notes and forgot one of our drinks but perhaps this comes to experience? The staff were helpful in other ways talking us through the menu and assisting with which sides to have (although a couple were unavailable) The cheeses were amazing and I look forward to returning to try more dishes on the menu. For those first timers a flight and sides is a great way to get the Milk the Cow experience! They also do a beer flight and a whiskey flight - bottoms up!