Melbourne is a city that calls your name. Not unlike Berlin, not unlike New York, it is a city that only makes sense to those for whom it calls. Geographically abstract, environmentally obtuse, financially prohibitive; to be a Melburnian is a badge of honour that tells the world “I’m here because it called for me”.
We are tribal to the point of combativeness. Our football teams hold an unnatural hold over our mental health, alternating from joyous optimism to deepest sorrow in seven day increments. We align ourselves wholly to our chosen quadrant of the city, and hand over most of our personality traits, too. And we aspire above all things, perhaps even the long abandoned dream of property ownership, to be a beloved regular at a cool restaurant.
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We love restaurants because we love food, but there’s more to it than that. We are bohemian by nature, the benefactors of a generational DNA that valued the art of hanging out. In the 1920s, Hemingway escaped his American life to hang out in the cafes of Paris with Fitzgerald, Stein and Barnes. In the 2020s, he’d probably be living in a sharehouse in Carlton, and imbibing in Brunswick.
Melbourne has so much to offer, but without our deep cultural reverence for the act, and art, of eating out, we’re just an average town with excellent sporting facilities. Which is why walking along the city streets now feels a little like visiting a cemetery; you may not be grieving the loss of a loved one, but it’s a reminder that anyone can die, and everyone will eventually. Seeing the shuttered doors of shops, endless “for lease” signs, and deathly still dark restaurants on a Sunday, is a reminder that we are most definitely not in Kansas anymore.
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My Melbourne story feels unimaginable without Izakaya Den. Simon Denton’s subterranean Tokyo-noir bar was one of the first places I would go regularly when I started to earn my own money. Descending the secret staircase (before they got a bit quieter and added a sign), and parting the curtain felt like being transported into a different world. Memories of crispy sweetcorn tempura with green tea salt, sashimi and karaage, thudding music and a menu projected on the wall. It felt cool, and I felt cool being there. It’s where I discovered my beloved Echigo Koshihikari rice beer, and to this day whenever I drink it, I’m reminded of those nights. I guess I always enjoyed remembering those nights, safe in the knowledge that there could be more in the future. But there won’t be.
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I feel less spiritually aligned to the now departed Gingerboy, but as a student of the restaurant game growing up, it feels hard to believe Teage Ezard no longer has a presence in our city. He was a giant, his Flinders Lane basement restaurant Ezard a temple of fine dining, and a breeding ground for some of Australia’s best kitchen talent since 1999. Ezard opened Gingerboy in 2006, the year I graduated high school, and the bold and exciting fusion flavours introduced me to a world of cooking that I had never experienced. While this particular type of Westernised neon-fusion is the sort of exploitive appropriation I now rub up against, for a wide-eyed 18 year old aspirational bon vivant, your first Son In Law egg with caramelised fish sauce is a transformative moment.
The pandemic has been particularly unkind to Ezard. In addition to closing his flagship restaurant in 2020, Ezard’s consulting chef role at Coldstream’s Levantine Hill Estate restaurant also ended. Gingerboy was the last stand in what was once a fledgling restaurant empire, but Covid changed the formula for success. In a recent interview with Dani Valent, a clearly rattled Ezard seemed at a loss, unable to explain why his restaurant was no longer profitable in a manner that warranted continuing. An uncharitable read of the conversation would suggest that Ezard is out of touch, putting the onus on the diner to spend more and expect less. A more sympathetic view would be that Gingerboy had simply had its time, and that nothing lasts forever. I’m somewhere inbetween, in the grey, where most other hospitality professionals now find themselves; can we push on and endure, or is it simply smarter to walk away?
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When Neil Perry and Crown Casino opened Rosetta in 2012, it felt like a glitzy, optimistic gambit on Melbourne becoming an international highroller city, like Las Vegas, Macau or Singapore. That never came to be. Looking back, Rosetta stands as one of the more audacious restaurants ever opened in Melbourne, and candidly, it’s a surprise it lasted so long. Cavernous, expensive, but undeniably excellent, Rosetta’s woodfired Italian food offered Perry another avenue to showcase his approach to premium and sustainable produce, but never truly connected to the masses like his other brands, Rockpool and Spice Temple, did. A Sydney iteration opened in 2017, but barely lasted four years. Rosetta stands as the distillation of a bygone era, where Perry and the burgeoning Rockpool group had the midas touch, and it felt like there was no limit to the amount of exciting new venues they could open, both in Australia and abroad. Rosetta never recovered from Perry exiting the group; without the provenance and quality that his name afforded the venue, Rosetta was just another Italian restaurant. And we already have a few of those in Melbourne.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are new places, great places, opening in Melbourne and across Australia all the time. Partly, this is natural selection, partly the logical transitioning from one energy source to another. New, younger restaurateurs will continue to rise from the ashes in our city, and they will be the ones that inherit the full booking sheets and plaudits of their predecessors. But at this time, there’s still sadness. The smell of new leather banquettes and fresh paint will entice, but the memories made in these rooms won’t be mine. No laughter has been absorbed by new walls, no tears have stained this new leather. The path forward has never been less certain, and the memories of meals long gone no longer light the way for us.
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