Queen Victoria Market
The man behind the cheese cabinet at Bill's Farm is a qualified cheese grader and a judge for the Australian Grand Dairy Awards, which is a stronger reason to walk into a 148-year-old market than the date on the sign.
Why go
The market was established on a cemetery in 1878 and covers everything from fruit sheds to souvenir stalls, so the useful question is which counters a cook should walk to. Broadsheet's guide names them with their operators attached: Bill Tzimas at Bill's Farm, a former maths teacher who now grades cheese professionally and stocks Holy Goat La Luna and fromage de Meaux; Wayne Chitty at Happy Tuna, whose grandfather started at the market in the 1920s; Gus and Carmel Bressi at G&C Fresh Produce, stallholders since 1978, who keep no coolrooms because they say the produce moves too fast to need them (Broadsheet). The Chicken Pantry runs birds most butchers will not carry, including Yarra Valley quail and quail eggs, pigeon, rabbit and kangaroo. In the Dairy Produce Hall, Alec Watson and Son makes its own cotechino and Ripe carries fifty Australian artisanal cheeses, per a Time Out guide written in association with the market itself (Time Out).
Order this / avoid
- Buy: cheese at Ripe and butter carved off the slab at Curds and Whey. Cotechino from Alec Watson and Son. Whatever George the Fishmonger landed that morning. Quail or game from The Chicken Pantry. A bag of hot jam doughnuts from the American Doughnut Kitchen van outside D shed.
- Avoid: Mondays and Wednesdays, when nothing trades. The general merchandise sheds, which sell souvenirs. Arriving after lunch on a weekday, since the doors shut at 3pm.
What locals & experts say
- Broadsheet, on Bill's Farm: Tzimas is
a qualified cheese grader, a judge for the Australian Grand Dairy Awards and one of the best cheesemongers in town
.7 - Time Out Melbourne, on the doughnut van, April 2025:
Staff are busy within, cutting dough, frisbeeing it into the fryer and dusting it with sugar, the recipe is unchanged after almost 70 years.
The piece is unbylined, so it is the masthead's line.9 - A caveat about the recent coverage: Time Out's 2025 shopping guide runs "in association with Queen Victoria Market". It is useful for which stalls are trading and for the tip that Tuesday and Thursday are the quiet days. It carries no independent verdict, and it is not treated as one here.
- Robbie Noble, chef at Cherrywood, on where he eats breakfast out:
The most breakfast I eat out probably comes in the form of some fresh prawns and oysters at Queen Vic Market whilst I'm getting my weekly shop in.
4 - Aleksis Kalnins, opening chef at Molli, on where he goes for inspiration: the market is
about as raw and authentic as it gets, just a whole lot of people coming together to find great produce and ingredients, and producers passionate about obscure things
.5 - Still no critic verdict. No reviewer reachable on 2 August 2026 has ruled on the market's current food offer.
Good to know
- Where: Queen St, at the top of the CBD, walkable from most of the city grid.
- Timing: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 6am to 3pm, Saturday 6am to 4pm, Sunday 9am to 4pm. Closed Monday and Wednesday. Specialty shopping opens at 9am on every market day.
- Quiet days: Tuesday and Thursday.
- Works: the market is running a restoration programme and the Gurrowa Place project, and the Franklin Street car park exit is closed. Expect parts of the site to be under construction.
- Food safety: Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions, updated 21 July 2026, lists no conviction for the market or for any trader named in this entry. That register is per business and holds each conviction for twelve months, so it cannot clear several hundred individual stalls, and Victoria publishes no hygiene ratings at all.
Verdict
should-visit — Go for the counters, and know which half of the market to skip. Age is not the argument here: the test for a place established in 1878 is what you would actually buy today, and the answer is good. Bill Tzimas at Bill's Farm is a qualified cheese grader and a judge for the Australian Grand Dairy Awards. Ripe carries fifty Australian artisanal cheeses. Alec Watson and Son makes its own cotechino, which is a sausage most Melbourne butchers will not have. George the Fishmonger sends the same fish to restaurant kitchens around the city, and The Chicken Pantry keeps quail, pigeon, rabbit and kangaroo alongside the birds. Outside D shed the American Doughnut Kitchen has fried the same jam doughnut since 1950. The other half of the site is souvenirs, and the general merchandise sheds are for tourists rather than for cooks. It stays below the top rung because the deepest stall reporting available is eight years old, the only recent guide was written in association with the market itself, and no chef in the Melbourne industry vote names it.