Sodafish

Set into a refurbished ferry moored at Middle Boat Harbour, the dining room floats among the working fishing fleet it buys from, about the shortest supply chain a seafood kitchen can manage. Executive chef and owner Nick Mahlook runs the operation on two levels: an upstairs bar and eatery for sit-down seafood, and a downstairs fish-and-chippery for something quicker over the water. It trades seven days across lunch and dinner, rare in a town whose kitchens can turn seasonal. The setting could carry the whole thing on novelty alone, but the cooking is the point, leaning on Gippsland Lakes fish and the boats tied up alongside. It reads as a genuine expression of Lakes Entrance rather than a tourist-strip catch-all.