Best Melbourne restaurants for business lunches: Gimlet, Flower Drum
The perfect lunch venue can be an ally in getting a deal over the line. We’ve compiled a list of Melbourne’s top five venues to get the job done.
The art of the perfect business lunch takes years to perfect. You can’t just launch into your pitch from the get go, you need to ease into it, letting your guests take the edge off their hunger and perhaps allow the wine to do its work. And most importantly, you need the right venue - one where you’ll be greeted by name, establishing that you are indeed someone worth lunching with - where the menu is just right, and where the staff know the perfect balance between being attentive to your every need, and knowing when to give you space to clinch the deal.
Melbourne’s top-shelf restaurateurs have established themselves as the place to be seen doing business, or to serendipitously bump into those who are. As business leaders return to offices, and dining tables, around the nation, we’ve selected what we believe to be Melbourne’s top business restaurants for your dining and dealing pleasure.
Gimlet
- 33 Russell Street, Melbourne
- European bistro cuisine
- Signature Dish: John Dory Florentine, brown butter and smoked salmon roe
This cocktail bar and restaurant in the 1920s heritage building Cavendish House, previously home to first a furniture and then a Bang & Oulfson speakers retail store, has become one of the hottest new dining spots in the Melbourne CBD since it opened in November.
Owner Andrew McConnell, whose Trader House group owns the nearby Supernormal and Cutler & Co restaurants, engaged Sydney-based architecture and design studio Acme for the multi-million dollar fit out, which has proved an early hit with corporates returning to city after last year’s lockdown.
The attraction of Gimlet for the likes of billionaire Alex Waislitz, corporate adviser David Williams and the top partners at Arnold Bloch Leibler - think Henry Lanzer and Leon Zwier - has been the French bistro feel of McConnell’s new offering.
Gimlet is also split into four spaces — a cocktail bar, an up-market restaurant on the upper level, a 12-person private dining area and a more casual space on the lower level.
“The idea was to create what feels like a big city restaurant but to me it really represents Melbourne,’’ McConnell says.
“In the last three months I’ve learnt it is the perfect time to open something like this. People have come out of lockdown and they want to celebrate. Trading has been well above what we expected. The corporate market is quiet in Melbourne however we have been quite good.”
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Kenzan
- 45 Collins Street, Melbourne
- Japanese cuisine
- Signature dish: Kenzan Korin: Special two-tiered lunch box with Sashimi, small appetisers, prawn dumplings and a choice of teriyaki chicken OR beef with rice and miso soup
The focus of this Melbourne institution is quick and simple lunches for business deals because of its proximity to the top end of Collins St and the top investment banks, stockbrokers and lawyers.
The distinguishing thing about Kenzan is the healthy food and best sushi/sashimi in the city with little emphasis on alcohol other than the occasional sake.
This is the venue for serious, concentrated work talk for the likes of Alex Waislitz’s Thorney Group, advisory house Kidder Williams, stockbrokers Bell Potter and Canaccord, real estate agents CBRE, property developer Jason Yeap, billionaire Peter Gunn and JP Morgan’s local chairman Sir Rod Eddington.
Kenzan also boasts several private rooms with sunken seats and where shoes are a no-no, which are perfect for discreet meetings.
But the no-shoe rule can be fraught. One investment banker recalls taking a big-name client there from Chicago who was only in Melbourne for a day. His shoes were stolen and the firm had to quickly buy him a new pair.
“We don’t play music so it is a very easy location to talk together. People can have their meetings over lunch,’’ says owner Kaz Murayama, whose family has been running the restaurant since 1981.
“We have reopened slowly after lockdown. While dinner is back on Monday to Saturday, we only started lunch on Thursdays and Friday’s last week.”
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Flower Drum
- 17 Market Lane, Melbourne
- Chinese cuisine
- Signature dish: Peking duck which is plated at the table
This Cantonese classic in the city’s Chinatown district has been operating unchanged for more than three decades. Its grand old-fashioned dining room was long a favourite of the late cardboard box king Richard Pratt and his many acolytes and mates.
Today you are more likely to spot billionaire Lindsay Fox, Kidder Williams founder David Williams with his favourite client, Bega Cheese supremo Barry Irvin, or a bunch of heavyweight lawyers, corporate advisers and directors of Rich Lister family offices.
“The Drum”, owned by Jason Liu, is still a lunchtime favourite for business deals because of its top-end-of Collins Street address and because the tables are far enough away not to be overheard.
But it also has a heavy night trade for entreating clients and especially for dinners to celebrate the closure of transactions because of the ability to get a private room for 20 or 40 people.
The wine list is more than 30 pages long, ranging from affordable European reds and whites by the glass to vintage Krug and Dom Perignon champagne.
“The Drum”, which is also frequented by colourful characters like Mick Gatto and is the restaurant of choice for the high end of horse racing industry and the place to come direct from the Melbourne Cup with the trophy, can be so busy former US President George W Bush couldn’t even get a table there during one visit to Melbourne.
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Cecconis
- 61 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
- Modern Italian cuisine
- Signature dish: Veal cotoletta, green apple, savoy cabbage and parsley salad
This long-time favourite for fine dining, situated in a basement on Melbourne’s most famous laneway, boasts a casual cellar bar and a commemorative wall display of photos celebrating the history of its owners, the Bortolotto family.
It boasts what is termed “the billionaire table” in the back right hand corner of the “rich” part of the restaurant, frequented by the likes of David Hains, Lindsay Fox and Solomon Lew. A good friend of all three, Crown Melbourne founder Lloyd Williams, is also known to regularly join them.
Just inside front door of the restaurant, back in what regulars call the “poorer” part, advertising man Ted Horton - inventor of the “Coles Down Down” campaign - holds court regularly.
As does one of Bell Potter’s top rainmakers Hugh Robertson and his favourite client Alex Waislitz.
Robertson says one of the reasons he loves Cecconis - as he does Kenzan - is because both have carpet.
“I have overheard conversations on hard floors that I should never have heard,’’ he says.
“There are some people who are simply masters at listening to the chatter at nearby tables.”
Robertson also has an amusing but pointed message for executives dining at Cecconis who run small cap companies backed by Waislitz’s Thorney Group.
“If Alex owns 10 per cent of your company and he sees you in the rich part and he is in the poor, look out!”
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Bistro Thierry
- 511 Malvern Road, Toorak
- Classic French cuisine
- Signature dish: Le Steak-Frites: Grass fed Eye fillet steak with fries and your choice of sauce
The black-and-white striped awnings and guillotine-style bread board at the bar are trademarks of this favourite of Melbourne’s rich and powerful in the city’s wealthiest suburb.
The powerbrokers that dine at owner Thierry Cornevin’s establishment, better known as “Toorak’s kitchen”, are worn on his sleeve because behind each table is a brass plaque with the name of frequents diners who have made big donations (think $300,000-plus) to select charities chosen by Cornevin. This year it is the Australian Prostate Cancer Centre.
Some of the big names on the plaques include the Victor Smorgon Group, billionaire Boris Liberman and the late former Melbourne Lord Mayor Ron Walker.
“We don’t care if you are a plumber or the Prime Minister, everyone gets treated the same. But then if the Treasurer and his wife come in for dinner (Josh Frydenberg is the local member), we make sure they get a table away from the crowd. Ron Walker had his special table, no one disturbed him when he was having dinner,’’ Corne says.
“We get anyone from the CEOs of the banks to ex-BHP people and so-on. We are located in Toorak so its easy access. We have had every Prime Minister and Opposition Minister in the place since Bob Hawke in the 20 years since we opened.”
The offices of the Smorgon family’s Escor Group are across the road, so its executives come for lunch every Tuesday. Other regulars include Jeff Kennett and former ANZ CEO Mike Smith.
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