Yiaga

The beef comes from Blackmore Wagyu cows retired from breeding, which is older meat that has done some work, chosen for what that does to the flavour.

Why go

Hugh Allen started at Rockpool at sixteen, spent three years at Noma, took Gourmet Traveller's Chef of the Year in 2023, and still runs Vue de Monde while cooking here (Gourmet Traveller). He found the site on a five-kilometre lockdown walk: a Fitzroy Gardens pavilion built in 1908 as a tearoom, given a dining room in the 1920s and empty for nearly a decade. John Wardle rebuilt it, keeping the structure and the roof, behind a single continuous wall of more than thirteen thousand hand-made tiles, with a concrete floor tinted with iron oxide so it reads as outback dirt (Broadsheet). Head chef Michael McAulay also came from Noma by way of Vue de Monde. The drinks are Dorian Guillon's, one of fewer than three hundred Master Sommeliers in the world, and he offers a classic pairing, an all-Australian one and a non-alcoholic list the kitchen rebuilds daily. Forty-four seats, one of them a semi-private table for eight, a dozen or more courses, two to four hours.

Order this / avoid

Order: you do not order, the kitchen does. What to look for on the way through: the Queensland coral trout, the retired-breeding-cow Wagyu, and the dive-foraged Victorian wakame, which at opening came braised and sweet in a dessert with strawberries and cream. Take the all-Australian drinks pairing over the classic one.
Avoid: deciding late. Bookings open on the first of each month for three months ahead, dinner Thursday to Saturday and lunch Friday to Sunday, and nothing trades Monday to Wednesday.

What locals & experts say

Broadsheet, on the room: Yiaga, which opened in October 2025, is one of the most striking restaurants Melbourne has ever seen. Wardle was specifically chosen because he'd never done a restaurant prior.3
Hugh Allen, to Gourmet Traveller, on the sourcing brief. This is his own restaurant, so it is his statement of intent: We're looking for new, raw and fresh producers. We want guests to have that sense of discovery, and for it to be an exciting opportunity to try foods they maybe haven't eaten before.1
Time Out Melbourne, on the name and the building: Yiaga is an Indigenous word meaning 'to seek and find', and the kitchen is described as in a constant state of experimentation and development.2
No critic has ruled on it in anything reached here, and no third-party chef names it. Both Hugh Allen and Michael McAulay appear in Melbourne's chef-vote corpus, but as voters affiliated to this restaurant, so neither can vouch for it.4

Good to know

Where: in Fitzroy Gardens, 230-298 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne. It is a pavilion in a public park, not a street address you walk past.
Timing: dinner Thursday to Saturday, lunch Friday to Sunday. Closed Monday to Wednesday.
Booking: essential, and the window matters. Reservations open on the first of each month for three months in advance.
Runtime: two to four hours across a dozen or more courses.
Owners: Allen owns it with the Singaporean property developers Philip and Robert Ng, so this is a chef's first solo kitchen with outside capital behind it.
Diet: no allergen or dietary statement was found, which matters more on a set menu than anywhere else. Call ahead.
Hygiene: Victoria publishes no venue ratings, only Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions under s.53D of the Food Act 1984, and this venue is not on it.5

Jeff's take (his words)

Note: ambitious new fine dining restaurant

Verdict

should-visit — The beef comes from retired Blackmore Wagyu breeding cows, which is old animals that have worked, and that is a deliberate choice about flavour over tenderness. The wakame is dive-foraged off the Victorian coast and turned up in a dessert with strawberries and cream. Hugh Allen started at Rockpool at sixteen, spent three years at Noma, was Gourmet Traveller's Chef of the Year in 2023, and still runs Vue de Monde while cooking here; his head chef Michael McAulay came from Noma too, and the drinks are run by Dorian Guillon, one of fewer than three hundred Master Sommeliers anywhere. The room is a pavilion built as a tearoom in 1908, empty for nearly a decade, rebuilt by John Wardle behind a wall of thirteen thousand hand-made tiles. Forty-four seats, a dozen or more courses, two to four hours. It is genuinely the most ambitious thing to open in Melbourne in years and it is exactly the register the city already has plenty of, so it sits under occasion rather than as a first send. No critic verdict is in this file yet, which is the other reason it holds here.

Yiaga.