The Grand Slam Oval sits at the center of the Melbourne Park precinct, a big open lawn ringed by big screens showing live matches, and it's as much a food destination as a place to watch tennis for free. Melbourne takes its restaurant scene seriously, and the Australian Open leans into that rather than settling for standard stadium concessions — the food lineup changes most years but consistently pulls in genuine Melbourne restaurants rather than generic caterers.
Shake Shack made its Australian debut at the tournament, serving its signature Shack Burger — griddled Angus beef, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and Shack Sauce on a buttered potato bun — alongside an Open-exclusive milkshake flavor. It's the kind of import that draws a genuine queue on a hot afternoon. Entrecôte, a Prahran French brasserie, built its Open reputation on a AU$27.50 steak sandwich that consistently sells out and gets talked about more than most of the tournament's actual food lineup. See live rating and reviews on Google Maps For something distinctly local, look for the Peach Melbourne soft serve — peach, raspberry, and vanilla soft serve riffing on the 1890s Peach Melba dessert Escoffier created for Dame Nellie Melba, a genuinely Melbourne-specific dessert rather than a tennis-branded gimmick.
The vendor list rotates: recent years have added Vietnamese fried chicken from Season, Singaporean-Malaysian small plates from Ho Jiak (prawn toast with molten salted duck egg, spiced pork jowl rolls) See live rating and reviews on Google Maps, Italian pizza by the slice from D.O.C., and Greek souvlaki from Melbourne institution Stalactites See live rating and reviews on Google Maps. None of these are Open-only pop-ups pretending to be restaurants — they're real Melbourne kitchens setting up a second location for three weeks.
Prices sit well above a regular Melbourne lunch, which is standard for any major sporting event, but the quality bar is real: this isn't a food court, it's closer to a rotating festival of some of the city's better casual restaurants, condensed onto one lawn.
