When MELBZ publishes a “best of” list — best brunch in Fitzroy, best dog-friendly cafés in Brunswick, best wine bars for a Tuesday in the inner west — every entry is scored on the same 5-point scale.
This page is what those scores mean. Every “best of” article on MELBZ links here.
The scale
We use a whole-number 1 to 5 scale. No half-points. No 9.7 vs 9.4 false precision.
| Score | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Top of the city. | The best in its category in Melbourne. Worth a deliberate trip across town. We would tell a visiting friend to go here ahead of anywhere else. |
| 4 | Excellent. | Among the best in its category in its part of Melbourne. We’d recommend it without caveat to anyone the article is written for. We would return at our own expense. |
| 3 | Solid and worth knowing about. | Reliable, does what it claims, fits a specific use-case well. Not a destination on its own but absolutely makes the list when you’re in the area or have the specific need. |
| 2 | Has a place but not the first choice. | Useful in narrow circumstances (it’s open late, it’s the only one in walking distance, it’s the only kid-friendly option on that street). We name it because the audience needs to know it exists, not because it’s outstanding. |
| 1 | We considered including it and decided against. | A score of 1 doesn’t appear in published articles. It’s the editor’s note explaining why a venue everyone expected to see on the list isn’t there. |
In practice published articles include 4s and 5s, with 3s when the category demands breadth (e.g. “every late-night kitchen in the CBD,” where being open at 1am qualifies you for inclusion regardless of greatness).
What we score
For food, drink, and venue articles:
- Quality of the core offer. The coffee, the food, the cocktail, the experience the venue is built around. This is the bulk of the score.
- Suitability for the named audience. A 5 for “kid-friendly cafés in Hawthorn” is a venue that works brilliantly for parents with young kids, even if a foodie magazine would score it lower. We rate to the audience the article is written for.
- Service consistency. Whether the experience holds up across multiple visits and times of day. We don’t rate based on a single lucky visit.
- Local context. A great Vietnamese in Footscray is judged against the Vietnamese options in Footscray. We don’t pretend a Brunswick venue is competing with the CBD’s top three.
- Accessibility. Step-free access, accessible toilet, prams welcome, dogs welcome — flagged inline because they materially change suitability for many readers.
For property, transport, family, and suburb-living articles, we adapt the rubric. The published article always states which criteria scored what.
What we deliberately don’t score
- Ambience aesthetics divorced from use. A “vibe” score that doesn’t correspond to a real reader decision is noise.
- Single-visit impressions. No score is given on a single visit to a place we hadn’t previously known.
- Things we have not personally tested. We will not score a venue we have not visited. If we list a venue without a score, the article says we have not visited and explains what we have done instead (sourced from the venue’s own materials, cross-referenced with named other reporting, etc.).
- Anything compensated. A comped meal voids the score. We pay our own way or we don’t score.
Anti-pastiche statement
MELBZ does not publish AI-generated reviews of venues we have not been to.
The 2024–2025 wave of AI-generated local guides recommending non-existent cafés, hallucinated opening hours, and made-up cocktails is the failure mode we exist to be different from. Every score on every MELBZ “best of” list traces back to a named MELBZ writer who walked through the door, paid their bill, and formed an opinion.
If a venue is named on a MELBZ list with a score, a human went there. If you suspect otherwise about any specific entry, write to [email protected] and we will name the writer who scored it and the date of their last visit.
How rankings work within a list
A “best of” list is ordered by editorial judgement, not by raw score arithmetic. Two venues both scoring 4 may be ordered by which fits the article’s named audience better. The article always explains the ordering at the top.
Disagreements
Disagreement is welcome. Different Melburnians will reasonably score the same venue differently — coffee preference, noise tolerance, what “kid-friendly” means to your particular kid. Email the editor if you think a score is materially off, with a substantive reason. We won’t change a score because of pressure but we will revisit the entry on the next review pass and the conversation will inform the next visit.
Last reviewed: 2026-04-25. Next review: 2026-07-25.