Upper Riverside Terrace, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Melbourne, 8698 8888
My score: 3.5/5
The best thing about Trocadero is that it’s there at all, serving drinks and food at a jaunty clip to Arts Centre visitors and Southbank browsers. A seamless saunter from Hamer Hall takes you into the bar. The upper Southgate concourse spills into the restaurant’s terrace, soon to be winter-proofed with glass and heaters. Your Trocadero view might be of an outdoor lift shaft or the more enchanting sight of Flinders Street Station and the city. Last time, I succumbed to a reverie of overcrowded trains and Myki beeps but you can insert your own magical Melbourne moment.
I’ve experienced the gamut of service here: uninterested, efficient, dismissive, heartwarming. The functional nature of the restaurant as pre-theatre meet-up zone can lead to a lack of atmosphere and engagement. The look doesn’t inspire passion either: the cool greys and graffiti art have brutal appeal but they don’t really nudge the interior out of its corporate could-be-anywhere mood. While I’m kvetching, I also have a gripe about the toilets (I can vouch for the ladies only): the doors are too large for the cubicles so a person has to edge in awkwardly to close them. I hate that.
Anyway, the food is mostly really good, with interesting flourishes boosting a necessarily safe menu. Chicken breast vies with eye fillet as the dullest meat cut in the world but this dish shows why it’s beloved by billions. The corn-fed meat is honey coloured and juicy, the skin is gently crisped, and the dish is jazzed up with layered figs and a foamy sauce infused with hay. Hey? Yes, hay, a new ‘it’ ingredient, lending an earthy, grassy complexity to dishes all over town. Sweet Moreton Bay bugs come with fried leeks and lemon chutney, and a rich onion risotto has caramel crunch and jammy depth. Two sausage dishes lost me: the beef and quinoa sausages are overpowered by their chipotle (smoky chilli) element and a side order of chorizo and whipped potato struck me as a good way to ruin two types of wonderful.
Desserts rock. Even that old standby pannacotta is turned into a festival of flavour with mint jelly, peach and pepper granita and a thick (too thick) disc of shortbread. It’s a comforting but sparky ‘curtains down’ to a meal. If there wasn’t an Arts Centre show to follow I can imagine calling for an encore.
See their website.
More Arts precinct:
Red Emperor, Midlevel, Southgate, Southbank, 9699 4170
Still revelling in a great new location, Red Emperor serves good Cantonese dumplings and a sprinkling of regional dishes. There are two yum cha sittings on Sundays, served from trolleys.
Sake Restaurant & Bar, Riverside, Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Melbourne, 8687 0775
Underneath Trocadero, right on the river, Sake is a lively choice for vibrant Japanese food. Try the kingfish double crunch and yuzu miso cream scallops.
Persimmon, National Gallery of Victoria, St Kilda Road, Melbourne, 8620 2434
Persimmon is one of Melbourne’s most peaceful dining rooms and the lunches are fresh and lively from new NGV chef Gabriel Martin. Ask about 2-course plus exhibition tickets.
First published in The Age, March 24, 2013
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