Easter Indulgence: Fine Dining Restaurants Offering Decadent Easter Menus

Aria executive chef Tom Gorringe is putting on a limited-edition long weekend seafood spread ($300pp) that’s a celebration of the best of the sea. Soak up the views of the Opera House and harbour while sinking into a six-course tasting menu that begins with a luxurious dish of scarlet prawn with potato, caviar and buttermilk, and also stars pasta with black marron. Finish the meal with a rich chocolate-y, coffee-spiked dessert.

Your Good Friday seafood feast is sorted at spectacular waterfront diner Stokehouse. The set menu ($195pp) is heaving with delights, including a lush spanner crab and coconut doughnut; a seafood platter piled with lobster, abalone, prawn cocktail and more; and coral trout served with a marigold rouille, bouillabaisse and diamond clams.

Prefer to pick and choose your own Easter lunch combination? Collins Kitchen, in the Grand Hyatt Melbourne, is putting on a special Easter Sunday buffet ($175pp). Err traditional with oysters, lamb rump and duck fat-roasted potatoes – or take advantage of the buffet’s various stations, which are doling out everything from sashimi to lamb korma and kung pao chicken. Finish it all off with themed Easter desserts, including hot cross bun bread and butter pudding, mini egg profiteroles and jars of mini chocolate eggs.

Every day of the Easter long weekend, stylish Argentinian restaurant La Boca is dishing up a seafood buffet ($149pp) stocked with locally sourced seafood – think barramundi ceviche, Moreton Bay bugs, smoked salmon and Pacific oysters. But it’s not a seafood-only affair. It’s also going hard on the Argentinian delicacies such as empanadas, and pork belly and Wagyu cooked in a firepit, plus Latin American-inspired veggie dishes including fried plantain with speck and spinach, and paprika-dusted roast potatoes with bacon and sour cream. The sweet ending also draws from that part of the world: churros, alfajores and dulce de leche cheesecake are all on the pass.

Spend Easter in the peachy surrounds of this charming Glebe diner, which is doing Easter a little differently with an Oaxacan-inspired brunch ($65) on Sunday March 31. Sip on a welcome cocktail before you dive into an extravagant five-course menu of mezcal-infused oysters, lobster tacos and octopus chorizo with crispy potatoes. While chocolate isn’t on the menu, a fig leaf creme caramel ends proceedings on a sweet note.