Karen Martini’s first CBD restaurant Hero at Federation Square

Celebrity chef Karen Martini’s new city restaurant is not only Hero by name, but by nature— especially with this winner chicken dinner.

Dan Stock

@dantonstock

4 min read

March 2, 2021 - 10:00AM

Decadent cavatelli with crab. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Food

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Confession time.

At the end of a long working week of late nights and early starts there’s nothing I enjoy more than a Friday night free, where it’s just tracky dacks, a negroni-filled tumbler, takeaway … and Better Homes on TV. (I save Gardening Australia for Saturday mornings.)

There’s something so soporifically soothing about the avuncular charms of Dr Harry Highpants, the dreams-are-free garden makeovers and the look-through-your-fingers craft projects, while Joanna Griggs could just read aloud the Yellow Pages and I’d still be charmed.

And of course, you’ve got to love a general lifestyle program with not one but two cooks and food segments. Well, I do.

While the TV vehicle that has brought her into our lounge rooms for more than a decade is the perfect Friday night in, Karen Martini’s new restaurant makes for the perfect night — or day — out.

A long-held dream of the accomplished author, presenter, restaurateur and chef has come to fruition with Hero.

Vitello tonnato served with potato bread with blueberries and curd. Picture: Wayne Taylor.

Her wish for a CBD restaurant has landed her smack bang in the heart of Federation Square as part of the multi-zero makeover of the new and improved Australian Centre of Moving Image.

Be careful what you wish for, they say, for Hero is a multi-headed Hydra, offering grab-and-go breakfasts of granola and mortadella brioche buns and baked pastries from sun up and dirty martinis and a half dozen cheeky oysters at sun down, with housemade choc tops and cheese platters for cinephiles, crumbed fish sangas and meatball subs and coffee, of course, to power the lot.

But it’s the all-day dining served from 11.30 where you’ll make the most of both Martini’s smarts in the kitchen and designer Chris Connell’s elegant room.

A face on the telly no doubt helps pull a crowd, and these diners are clearly delighted to spy Martini in the kitchen this Saturday lunch. She’s on the tools, as is Michael Gebran, her partner in this venture who’s looking after the floor helped by a young, keen and pretty terrific team.

Baccala fritte is a simple pleasure. Picture: Wayne Taylor

It’s a wonderfully stylish space of high tables and long banquettes, where clever partitioning means its 150 seats feels cosy and intimate, a mood helped by low lighting and cinematic spots.

Gestural portraits of stars of screen and stage — Jackie Weaver and Nic Cave among the familiar faces — adding pops of colour to the otherwise understatedly calm palette of monochromatic greys livened with stainless steel and glorious powder blue.

Martini’s food has always been approachable and vibrant, the broad Mediterranean brush seen since her Melbourne Wine Room days shining through the menu here that has something for everyone — though you’ll likely want the lot.

Start with the potato bread, for Martini’s focaccia is truly out of this world.

Cloud-light yet complex, the soft, salty slice comes studded with blueberries, the sweetness of which pairs perfectly with a sharp and lively goat’s curd alongside.

It’s a plate of tear, swipe, delight ($16) that’s as perfect an opener to a multi course meal as it is simply paired with a glass of Yarra Valley bubbles or a Manzanilla sherry before an ACMI explore.

Ditto the baccala fritte, three golden orbs of soft, creamy, salty deliciousness topped with fried curly parsley. Dunk in the lemony mayo and revel in another of the simple pleasures Martini does so well ($14).

Roast chicken with plum mostartdo and anise roasted carrots with chilli and macadamia

See also: excellent buffalo mozzarella from Thomastown’s That’s Amore paired with fat slices of juicy beefsteak tomatoes, perfectly juicy peaches and pickled onion for bite.

At once sweet and sharp, fresh and creamy and erring on the right side of decadent, it’s produce as the star but directed by a pro ($20).

Vitello tonnato — the classic Italian dish of poached veal with tuna — is given a Martini shake thanks to fried artichoke blooms, her tuna dressing satisfyingly dense, the plate generously strewn with capers and caperberries. It’s a classic twisted for today ($23).

The roast chicken is a straight up hero, heady with thyme and with a rich, buttery gravy, the super-tender and juicy meat — a bit bloody by the bone — served with sweet-sharp mustard plums. It’s a generous serve that, paired with the excellent roasted carrots with anise sweetness and bursts of fermented chilli heat ($18), makes for a terrific lunch for two ($36).

But solo diners could do much worse than setting down to a bowl of fresh cavatelli, the small pasta shells swimming in a deeply decadent seafood bisque and generously strewn with freshly picked crab meat ($36).

The roasted peach Melba is just one glorious dish to try at Hero. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Wines to go with look to Europe and much closer to home in equal measure, with enough skin-contact funkiness and off-piste drinking to appeal to auteurs among the barolos, burgundys and artful aromatics. Prices are CBD steep-ish, and that $18 glass of Mornington pinot really should be poured at the table.

But it’s a rare hiccup in an already polished performance just a couple of weeks in, and when you find out that Philippa Sibley is also in the kitchen (along with executive chef Diego Rosales), that perfect peach Melba — the fruit roasted soft, the vanilla ice cream luxurious, the raspberries straight from central casting — makes perfect sense ($16).

With broad charms that are timeless and pan-generational, an approach that will appeal to tourists and townies alike with just the right amount of star power, as they say on screen, not all Heroes wear capes. Some wear whites.