Ritz-Carlton Melbourne: Atria restaurant review
Never eat at the hotel or trust a restaurant with a view. The Ritz-Carlton breaks both of these unspoken rules at Atria, and it’s paying off in spades.
Food
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Eighty floors above Melbourne the lights of the city fizz like champagne.
They sparkle as brightly as the French silverware on our white-clothed table and glint like our waiter’s cheeky smile.
You can’t help but get drunk on that view at Atria, the long-awaited sky-high Ritz-Carlton restaurant.
It’s a different world up here — a magical place where everyone gets to play millionaire.
A place where you are greeted and farewelled by name, escorted to the bathroom, find your napkin folded on return and (sometimes) have your chair placed under you.
Maybe that long ash bar running the length of the building will do it for you — lining diners like high court judges square with that view and chefs prepping oysters and raw fish.
Or feeling like you have the best seat in the house, regardless of where you sit.
There are no caviar bumps, dessert trolleys or champagne sabring — and very little OTT wealth flexing.
Atria is less show, more subtle woah.
It’s one of many hotel restaurants in this city, but feels like the most unlike a hotel of them all.
Local boy Michael Greenlaw’s cooking has a lot to do with this.
He leads the kitchen, under the direction of Aussie chef Mark Best, after stints at Michelin-starred restaurants abroad and longtime city fave Vue de monde.
Before you ask, Atria is nothing like its fellow canopy grazer.
The two are different in approach and user-experience, with Atria leaving less of a dent in the date-night fund.
Greenlaw’s style is more classic with a native bent — and it's clear he’s put in the work to design a menu that’s as exciting to read as it is to eat.
Starting with mighty snacks (both $9): a scallop-taramasalata-filled gnocco fritto (meh, but the pastry’s good) and raw yellowfin tuna wrapped in wasabi leaf anointed with punchy shisho buds (a special worthy of permanent menu presence).
And that smoked eel tart ($46); which I’m calling the fanciest potato salad in the sky.
Greenlaw tumbles cleansing grapes with eel flesh and cream, beneath a potato crisp and caviar, creating insane smoky, sweet and salty pleasure.
The pork jowl is also worthy of greatness ($29); he takes the most glorious cut, marinates it in mustard and miso and cooks it down until buttery tender, decorated with firm-sweet pears and whispers of singed cavolo nero to add texture and ’tude.
Greenlaw adds another interesting menu dimension by using the unheard of, gamier duck breed Khaki Campbell ($56).
The flavour isn’t as robust as imagined: still plump, juicy, tender and expertly cooked.
To most of us, duck is duck, and this is a very fine and delicious example.
Extra points for the herbaceous-plummy cabernet pairing over the expected pinot noir — and overall for the drinks list that’s pouring local wine and shaking up modern cocktails.
The Corner Inlet Greenback flounder ($49) was equally delicious, wading in a yolky butter sauce with chewy clams, caviar and roe.
Atria’s skills and thrills also carry over to dessert land, with ex-Tonka chef Kay-Lene Tan’s clever teardrop shaped pavlova ($23) with lemon myrtle ice cream a must.
In our food-obsessed city typically unforgiving of the ‘hotel restaurant’, Atria marks a new era with destination-worthy eats and clever cooking.
It’s early days, but I suspect Atria’s star will shine even brighter as time goes on.
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