Sardine Eatery+ Bar

Chef Mark Briggs cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens in Britain and ran the pass at Melbourne's Vue de Monde before he and partner Victoria Hollingsworth moved east to this lakeside town in 2017. The Esplanade dining room has held a hat in The Age Good Food Guide every year since 2019 and twice landed in the national Delicious 100. The menu changes constantly, built around what the Gippsland Lakes and surrounding farms yield that week, and the wine list has been recognised in the Australian Wine List of the Year awards. A more relaxed sibling, Sardine Cantina, extends the operation into wine-bar territory. For a town of a few thousand at the edge of the lakes, it is an unlikely fine-dining anchor, and one of the strongest reasons to point a car this far east.