Strato restaurant review: Oakwood Premier Melbourne’s new sky-high eatery is overpriced and overrated
Beef tartare smaller than your palm, $46 pastas and exorbitantly expensive dessert. This new restaurant in the clouds is overpriced and overrated.
Food
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It’s been a while since I paid more than $30 for dessert. Yep, you read that right.
Thirty big ones. Let’s do some quick maths: that’s equal to roughly 42 soft serve cones, six supermarket chocolate mud cakes and maybe a quarter of a tank of petrol – that’s on a good week.
If you’re dropping serious cash on sweets in this inflated climate, you’d better be loaded or hope your dessert blows your socks off, is out of this world, the best in your lifetime. Amazing.
At Strato – Sky Bar’s fancy restaurant sibling perched on the 40th floor of Southbank’s Oakwood Premier Melbourne – no minds were blown, nor worlds set on fire.
I didn’t hate that dark chocolate ganache ($33) with nutty cocoa rubble, bleeding with syrupy blackberries, vanilla ice cream (that didn’t taste smoked as suggested) hidden beneath two choc-malted wafers.
But like the restaurant’s moniker suggests, things are stratospherically expensive.
And it’s not just dessert that copped the “restaurant-with-a-view” tax.
A poached southern rock lobster ($42) lobe rests on three snap-firm asparagus twigs surrounded by champagne foam and blood orange segments.
The supporting fruit and veg do all the talking, outshining that bland and slightly overcooked crustacean. As for the foam? It adds nothing to the dish.
The beef tartare ($39), curiously priced the same as a pumpkin entree, is smaller than the palm of my hand. For almost $40 you’re better off stopping at the shops, buying an eye fillet and having a crack at making it yourself.
Look, I’ve had better tartares. More seasoning, tabasco, chive chirpiness and gooey-er quail egg to coat each of those wagyu tenderloin tresses in the expected glossiness would do the trick.
You do get a smoke show, with the tartare served under a glass cloche with a big theatrical reveal.
Larger plates range from exotic glacier toothfish with razor clams to sous vide chicken breast showered in black truffle, a $46 pasta dish and a $49 mushroom risotto strewn with porcini, enoki and pine mushrooms.
Top points for perfectly cooking the rice and that warming vegetable stock. It’s nice enough but doesn’t rock my world.
I feel obliged to try something from the grill, and opt for the modestly priced 200g wagyu tenderloin with a plus-5 marble score ($75). Add a side of kipflers ($17) and green beans ($15) – and it’s a $107 meal. Holy cow. For that price I’d expect more red wine jus in the accompanying jug, though the bush tomato chutney is delicious and adds dimension. At least the cocktails are aligned with Melbourne prices, the Moondance (available sans vodka) shaken to tart passionfruit, foamy perfection.
Wine by the glass is perhaps a little steep for what it is (largely Euro-leaning with choice Aussie pours) and that’s if you can read the list. Minuscule type and sexy mood lighting may see you bust out the phone light for some help.
Strato wasn’t all bad. It is a beautiful venue. The Oakwood build cost a cool $150m and you can tell with the attention to design detail at another level inside the 70-seater restaurant.
Floor-to-ceiling windows with palatial-like curtains beautifully frame those knockout city views. Marble-topped tables, terrazzo-tiled floors and designer crockery make you feel special.
Service was exceptional and the atmosphere warm and inviting.
Hospitality has and will continue to cop the brunt of soaring produce prices (thanks to shortages), with increasing pressure to offset rising overheads. That’s not helped by last-minute cancelled reservations, no-shows and ongoing staff shortages.
I could go on.
Diners are eating out less so they want more bang for their buck, and restaurants are doing what they can to survive in this challenging time. I get it. But Strato’s food is not worth your time or money. As I glance out at our city’s vast skyline, I realise I’d much rather spend my hard-earned at other sky-high restaurants, or even those planted firmly on the ground.
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