Previous SlideNext Slide

Consider the burger at Cutler: Gippsland beef, cooked to an obscenely juicy medium-rare. Bitey Comte cheese. Perfectly crunchy pickles. $35.

It is a weird dish to have become a signature at this restaurant, which for most of its 16-year tenure has been regarded as a special-occasion place, a standard-bearer for Melbourne excellence.

The burger was introduced in 2017 as part of a bar-only menu, at a time when degustation was the only option in the main dining room. It goes to show how long this restaurant has been grappling with a conundrum that feels central to its current identity: how does Cutler, which was built on a fine-dining foundation, remain relevant in a city that’s far more interested in casual eating?

I don’t use the name “Cutler” as a cute abbreviation. Last year, owner and executive chef Andrew McConnell changed the name from Cutler & Co. to the shorter form as part of a broader shift to realign the restaurant with “what luxury means to diners now, and how guests prefer to dine” (according to a spokesperson).

The format has changed, moving away from a pricey degustation with optional luxury add-ons to a more flexible a la carte menu. My guess is that this change had to do with the fact that, despite its cache, the fancier sibling was not nearly as busy as next-door Marion. In the CBD, McConnell’s Gimlet has managed to harness all the upscale credibility needed to make it one of the city’s toughest reservations, while offering an exceedingly flexible menu.

If Gimlet trades successfully in bombast, Cutler exudes a far quieter brand of luxury. The main dining room is still one of the sexiest places to eat in Australia, all brooding darkness and luminous twinkling from the tables – it’s properly magical, like a room lit by fireflies. The wine list is still one of the best in the city – if not the country – with something at every price point for any occasion.

Food is now divided into appetisers, entrees and main courses, with a section of “Cutler classics” so beloved by customers that removing them would be impossible (the burger included).

The appetiser list reads very much like what you might find on any wine bar menu – mainly things that can be assembled rather than cooked: crudites; prosciutto with persimmon; a tiny caviar tart. There’s a $60 per person seafood-over-ice situation that’s lovely but expensive for the two prawns, sliced snapper and scallops, and jumble of octopus you get.

Things get decidedly more exciting once you get to the entrees. Raw tuna comes in a generous, deep red blanket over a jumble of bullhorn peppers and horseradish and crisp fried bread, a fresh take on the ubiquitous raw-fish-on-toast. Wild venison is beautifully tender, cooked to a meaty medium-rare, leaving you with just a whisper of juniper on the tongue.

In the main courses, I find it hard to go past the King George whiting, cooked so perfectly it made me swoon, its soft flesh surrounded by a pool of creamy leeks in kombu butter.

But there’s a sense of a confused identity. Partly because the best cooking at the heart of this menu is just so good, and because the room feels so special, ordering a burger here honestly seems weird. (Like, I felt the need to apologise when I did so.) The more snacky small plates aren’t quite worthy of the space or of an occasion in which you’d want to eat there – prosciutto with persimmon is a breezy, no-fuss wine bar dish, not something you eat before a steak topped with foie gras.

I still think Cutler is, at its heart, a classic fine-dining restaurant. The moments of true brilliance are all in the serious cooking, the dishes that require more than just good ingredients and pretty plating, the ones that can only be produced by chefs who aren’t just talented but also extremely well-trained in classic European technique.

How does Cutler, which was built on a fine-dining foundation, remain relevant in a city that’s far more interested in casual eating?

I don’t envy McConnell and the conundrum at the heart of Cutler. It is, at its best, a fantastic restaurant, worthy of icon status. But it has none of the grand drama that makes Gimlet so of-the-moment, and I’m not sure if it will ever settle into a more casual persona. I wouldn’t want it to! We have lots of restaurants that fit that bill, many of them thanks to McConnell.

I would love to think that Melbourne is diverse enough in its dining needs that a quiet, grown-up, understatedly sexy fine diner would still be essential. I’d love to see Cutler settle into that role – not necessarily to return to a degustation format but to lean into the quiet luxury it does best, to be unabashedly fancy and let go of more casual ambitions. But alas, that may be wishful thinking on my part. The people want burgers.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.