The Cut Bar and Grill for Melbourne’s old Stokehouse City site; Sake expanding

New owners dub Melbourne Stokehouse site Alfred; Brisbane Spring is sprung; and other gossip from our top kitchens.

The Cut Bar and Grill Sydney Picture: Cut bar and Grill

Sydney-based Urban Purveyor Group, in a rush of fiscal blood to the head since its acquisition by a private equity fund, has foreshadowed substantial plans for the Melbourne Stokehouse City site it recently acquired from Frank Van Haandel.

The Alfred, as the property will be known collectively, is just one of three new restaurant sites the group will open in the first half of the year (including a new Sake in Flinders Lane and Sake Jr in Bourke Street) to complement its existing Sake Hamer Hall and Munich Brauhaus businesses. After remodelling with a $5 million-plus budget, the Alfred will get a Melbourne version of Sydney’s The Cut steakhouse behind the upper level of the grand Victorian edifice. Downstairs, the Alfred (named for the address, Alfred Place) will get a barbecue-focused “casual dining concept with inside and alfresco dining, a speakeasy-style bar, a Ralph Lauren-meets-Hemingway hunting lodge-inspired lounge”, according to the operators, and a high-end butcher takeaway shop. “We’re fortunate to have found two iconic sites,” says the group’s chief executive Thomas Pash, whose structural plans for the building include opening several of the ground-floor windows to the street. “We’re very confident in the Cut brand for Melbourne. A lot of our customers are from the big professional services companies, people who split their time between Sydney and Melbourne. They know us.” As with the new Sake in Flinders Lane (formerly Woody P), designer Melissa Collison has the brief. Demolition begins Sunday.

Brisbane: Spring, in the CBD, closes on Saturday. In a magnificently spun press statement, the restaurant has announced that (going into its fifth year) “Spring is also entering a new season as the business continues to evolve”. In fact the lease is up and the tenant has not renewed. The business owners, we’re told, are looking for alternative premises outside the CBD to purchase and carry on their weddings and functions business. “Spring hopes to take its staff forward to the new premises, but in the meantime staff have been generously compensated for the closure of the restaurant in its current location.” Like we said, closed.

Brisbane: Restaurateur (Nantucket Kitchen) TJ Peabody is well into development of his next wine-focused restaurant, Zinc, in Ann Street, Fortitude Valley. He has described the interiors as “Grand Central station meets Orient Express”, while the food will focus on light, produce-inspired versions of retro classics, such as steak diane and oysters rockefeller. Open April.

Melbourne: Bring in the signage guys: Number 8 by John Lawson, one of Crown’s premier Yarra-side restaurants, has lost it namesake. Lawson, a talented young Brit who arrived here originally to work for Gordon Ramsay at Maze (also within Crown) has pulled the pin with, he says, no firm plans. “It was time for me to go. Crown has been good to me, but Crown is always about the bottom line … The clientele there pretty much dictates the menu to a large degree. I’m excited about the future.” Lawson had a serious illness, a brain tumour, last year. He says that while he’s back to complete health, it changed how he felt about the job once back in the kitchen. “It made me realise and gave me some clarity: our ambitions didn’t really match.” Stay tuned.

Tasmania: Food identities Rodney Dunn and Severine Demanet, of Lachlan’s Agrarian Kitchen renown, are planning a restaurant, of sorts, in New Norfolk. The eatery will offer food similar to that produced at Dunn’s now-famous cooking school, with plans to run special dinners with Agrarian’s many stellar guest chef teachers. “To be honest,” Dunn says, “we saw a site and it just had to be done.” Open November.

Tasmania: Still down south, chef Philippe Leban, who left the kitchens of David Walsh’s the Source at MONA/Moorilla recently, is on the cusp of opening a cafe in Battery Point, we hear. Breakfast and lunch; no more dinners for lucky Leban. More soon. And while we’re in Van Diemen’s Land, plans for wine producer Frogmore Creek’s Hobart restaurant have accelerated with the producer taking a lease for two spaces at the new Macquarie Shed 1 hotel-retail development on Hobart’s waterfront. With a successful cellar door-casual restaurant at Cambridge, Frogmore will send executive chef Reuben Koopman to town to steer a new and ambitious restaurant, Atmosphere, as well as a wine lounge.

[e-mail]