For the second time this week, Eater heads Down Under: This time, to highlight the dozen hottest restaurants and bars in Melbourne, Australia. As was the case with the March 2015 Sydney Heatmap, restaurant expert Sharlee Gibb shares her picks for the hottest drinking and dining destinations that have surfaced in the past year.
Of course, the city's currently buzzing about chef Heston Blumenthal's local pop-up of his three-Michelin-starred UK restaurant the Fat Duck. When the reservation line went live in late 2014, Australian diners snapped up thousands of the $500 reservations, crashing the site in just 20 minutes. But Blumenthal's not the only pop-up game in town: Attica sous chef Peter Gunn is drawing major attention for his IDES pop-up at Persillade, which takes place just once a month. And elsewhere in the city, diners are savoring a "really f**king hot" chicken restaurant from a former Husk Nashville chef (Belle's Hot Chicken), a new bar from one of Australia's most acclaimed mixologists (Bar Exuberante), and the healthy spot where Blumenthal himself goes to sip green juice (Mastic). Here, in alphabetical order, the Eater Melbourne Heatmap for March 2015:
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