Five top Melbourne restaurants where you can get a free bottle of wine with your meal

These might just be the best dining room views in Melbourne – the glowing Arts Centre spire, the dark slash of the Yarra River, and the endless stream of commuters at Flinders Street Station. Executive chef Tony Twitchett is working with the high-octane flavours of South East Asia, a roiling mix of sweet, salt, sour and bitter. Dine à la carte or sample the best on a degustation menu: oysters, sake-washed tuna, candy pork belly, barramundi and scallop in a black garlic dressing, Sichuan salted duck (a Taxi classic) and a whipped panna cotta. Pay by Citi card and order a minimum of one main course per person and get a bottle of Coombe Farm Pinot Noir or Chardonnay to go with those unbeatable views.

Given Melbourne is rich in pubs, it’s a big call to suggest any watering hole is worth driving an hour out of the city to visit. But the Healesville Hotel in the Yarra Valley warrants the travel time. The sprawling pub, split into a public bar, dining room, and garden area, has an olde-worlde country charm. The weekend barbecues at Healesville Hotel run from summer until autumn, and the smell of ribs, grilled chicken, and if you’re lucky, a whole hog, wafts through the entire pub when the coals are fired up. The smoky grilled lemon and thyme chicken served with homemade crisps and ‘slaw in summer is switched up with winter vegetables mid-year. Among the year-round highlights is the 12-hour slow roasted lamb shoulder – a formidable hunk of fall-apart meat with a side of roasted swedes and a bright green, spinach and coconut curry sauce. When so close to the Yarra Valley it's only fitting to have a bottle of the local wine with your meal, and if paying with a Citi card you can get it gratis: Coombe Farm Pinot Noir or Chardonnay.

This eatery is South Yarra's take on Le Relais De L'Entrecôte – the famous one-dish steakhouse that opened in 1959 in Port-Maillot, Paris. A classic steak frites, made with Hopkins River grass-fed porterhouse, arrives dripping in a good herby sauce with mustardy depths and tangy sourness that doesn’t smother the meat’s satisfying grunt. For $46.90 you get the steak, you get the frites (limitless) and a green-leaf salad with walnuts, radish and Dijon vinaigrette. Enjoy it in the chic surrounds of the upstairs dining room and balcony (mint-green and lovely) and enjoy a bottle of Coombe Farm Pinot Noir or Chardonnay, which comes free when you order using your Citi card. Magnifique. 

Red Spice Road was one of the first South East Asian eateries to take a leaf out of the communal 'hawker' dining style that is taking over Melbourne. Executive chef John McLeay's menu takes inspiration from Thai, Cambodian, Burmese and Vietnamese cuisines and shakes it up with a modern Australian spin. This is the kind of restaurant where diners will need to bring as many friends as possible to make sure they can sample as many dishes as possible. Expect the South East Asian staple pork belly with a tangy apple 'slaw (a Red Spice Road winner since day one, this one's a killer just with a steaming bowl of jasmine rice), the twice-cooked lamb ribs with chilli jam, and the spicy braised ox cheek Southern Thai-style red curry. That free bottle of McW Alternis Tempranillo or five-star Vermentino from the Riverina that you get by paying with your Citi card will help keep the good times flowing.    

Housed in Prahran’s former Hotel Max, the schmicko, Art Deco L’Hotel Gitan offers pub food done Jacques Reymond-style: an ongoing French revolution of an Australian institution. Like most of the clientele, L’Hotel Gitan’s food is smart casual. France and her North African and Indochinese colonial excursions colour the menu. Sliced-to-order charcuterie is a good bet, so go the whole hog: chewy, dense saucisson, soft, nutty curls of San Daniele jamón, lightly smoky bresaola, soft pork rillette and a rough-hewn, liver-happy country terrine.