Vines Cafe& Bar

Barkly Street's Art Deco frontage gives little away, but behind it sits the cafe Ararat locals have leaned on for more than two decades. Run by a chef couple, it works a modern Australian menu off locally sourced produce, breakfast rolling into lunch, with vegetarian and gluten-free options handled without fuss, and takes its coffee seriously enough that regulars rate the espresso against city benchmarks. Fully licensed, with room for sixty at a sitting, it flexes between a morning coffee stop and a midday sit-down, and doubles as a small bar when the occasion calls. In a town where the independent cafe scene is thin, it is the steady, long-running kitchen that both locals and passing travellers point newcomers toward.