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25 Toorak Road, South Yarra, 9821 4425
My score: 3.5/5
If you’re ever wondering what the weather is like in Portsea have a look through the window of 25 Toorak Road. If it’s perfect on the Peninsula there will be tables free in South Yarra. Howling a gale? This restaurant will be packed. Whichever it is, chef and restaurateur Denis Hagger, one of Melbourne’s biggest smoothies, will likely be strolling the carpeted floor of his new digs, charmingly mistaking wives for daughters and overseeing the dispatch of steak, grilled whiting and soufflé.
Yes, it’s an old-fashioned restaurant (and what a relief, you may say). There are no share plates. Nothing was foraged. Neither nose nor tail gets a guernsey. A gentleman arrived in post-opera bow tie while I was there. Antique furniture augments the dining room and the Les Jardins conservatory at rear. It’s clubby, and cross-table chat is common, but first-timers will feel welcome even if – egads – they’ve crossed the river to arrive at this elegant, adult place to dine. The menu leans so far towards French cuisine that it may as well recline on a chaise longue but Franglais standards are cannily propped by a little Italian. For the most part, dishes are rendered with skill and close attention. Plump scallops are sweet and smartly seared; stocky gnocchi are smothered in melting lamb ragu. Veal cotoletta (fancy bone-in schnitzel, but don’t tell anyone!) is crunchy crumbed and satisfying, especially with dollops of mustardy sauce gribiche. Grass-fed eye fillet is exemplary if unsurprising and its cafe de Paris butter melts most seductively. Rich chocolate tart and quivering lemon soufflé hit their marks with military precision.
Don’t come to 25 for revelatory dining. Do come to fill your belly and gargle nice wine, have conversations (you’ll be able to hear one another) and celebrate something, even if it’s just the dirty weather in Portsea.
See their website.
More not too noisy eateries:
Persillade, 150 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne, 9078 4056.
It’s a wine store that serves breakfast. It’s a place for a post-work debrief over oysters and confit fish. It’s a nothing-in-the-fridge stand by where the kids can have cheeseburgers. And it’s good.
Levantine Hill, 882 Maroondah Highway (enter via Hill Road), Coldstream, 5962 1333.
First they make the wine, then Teage Ezard designs food to go with it. Fold yourself into a barrel booth in the casual bistro for pastrami sandwiches or glam it up in the restaurant for finely worked degustation dining.
Tonka, 20 Duckboard Place, Melbourne, 9650 3155.
Even though this modern Indian restaurant is housed in an old nightclub it keeps the decibels down and the flavours sophisticated.
First published in The Age, August 23, 2015.
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