Hare & Grace Melbourne

User Reviews of Hare & Grace, Melbourne

Displaying: 1 - 3 of 3 reviews

7.5 Recommended

Food 7 Ambience 9 Service 7 Value 7

Those who lived their childhood in the last decade of the millennium will have been weaned on the fantastical magic conjured by authors of Harry Potter, Eragon and the never-dying stream of vampiric beings.

For others, Herge’s intrepid Tintin, Roal Dahl’s wit, Enid Blyton’s faraway trees, and Beatrix Potter’s talking animals would be more familiar. Located amid the surrounding bleak glass and steel office buildings of Melbourne’s business-centric Collins Street, across from the Stock Exchange building and under the Rialto, once you push and elbow your way through a 35+-year-old something crowd that seems to be perpetually affixed to the frontage, descending underground into Hare & Grace is like stepping into the pages of a Beatrix Potter tale.

Divided into two areas, the decor is farmyard chic. Chairs are upholstered in a scratchy moss green and vintage white fabric. Generously-spaced tables are configured from varnished wood slats that could have come from packing crates. They are laid with tea towels as napkins and topaz-tinted water glasses. Murals of pigs and cows are stencilled brown on painted cream walls, and black cages hang from dark exposed foundation beams.

But it is the ceiling that sears Hare & Grace’s decor into one’s memory — shafts of halogen light intermittently penetrate through a ceiling of hacked branches in the same way as sunlight pepping through a forest canopy. It’s a strangely beautiful, other-worldly dining setting.

Beatrix Potter succeeded in translating farm animal talk into prose that could be comprehended by ordinary people, bringing alive an imagined world of hares, ducks, echidnas in a country wilderness.

By contrast, Hare & Grace’s story is sometimes difficult to translate let alone comprehend. There’s clearly an extraordinary mind/s behind Hare & Grace — the culinary creativity is evident and arguably, unsurpassed in Melbourne. But, Hare & Grace seems like a terrarium. A compact, visually-beautiful space that brings the outside world in, but is simultaneously, a closed, untrespassable world of its own.

Hare & Grace can be understood by those who live within this bubble-world — the professional food critic or the hospitality worker – but for the ordinary diner, it speaks too different a language for the latter to fully appreciate its pursuit of an other-worldly culinary dream.

The inconsistent service certainly doesn’t assist in guiding such lesser persons across that glass terrarium wall of Hare & Grace’s highly refined, highly creative, sometimes almost molecular gastronomy. That said, where the rest seems lost, Hare & Grace’s desserts succeeds, striking that balance between aspiration and inspiration. Extraordinary. The more casual food at the front dining area isn’t that bad either, but can’t be said to be entirely memorable.

It is in MoMo & Coco’s good opinion that it would be surely something very very good if the front dining area was converted into a permanent dessert bar…Melbourne’s first, perhaps. Now that would be a beautiful fairy tale.

Read more on my blog

Mar 02, 2012

MoMo and Coco
31

7.6 Recommended

Food 9 Ambience 7 Service 8 Value 7 Drinks 7

I had a wonderfully enjoyable meal here. Food was fresh and cooked perfectly, service was polite and helpful. For a restaurant that has only just opened, I was very impressed.

May 27, 2011

Steve G.
1

4.2 Below Average

Food 7 Ambience 2 Service 2 Value 3 Drinks 7

Beautifully presented food with some delicate flavours, though my fish was a little salty. Scallops, ox tongue, heirloom tomato salad and filled pasta delicious.

Unfortunately, there was only one other couple dining this Saturday night, so little ambience despite the money spent on the renovations. Staff clearly at their wits end, and difficult to see if this can survive in a crowded market. Especially when service was less than 100%. There were more staff than diners, and one waitress did nothing all night but top up our water once and polish glasses.

Sazerac was excellent, and the winelist is short, thoughtful and dominated by good value local drops. Overall, however, this did not come up to expectations as the complete experience, and as I felt as though I was dining in the morgue, represented poor value.

Lastly, let me add that the poor attendance occurs despite considerable media exposure since opening in November, especially in the past month. Two articles in the weekend paper, several mentions in the same paper in the previous week, glowing testimonials from that papers Good Food Guide, and several encomiums from restauranteur Matteo Pignatelli, himself a darling of the AGFG. Have a look at the prefabricated gush and multiple recommendations from single reviewers on their Urbanspoon site. Would that other restaurants could garner such support. Quite graceless.

Feb 07, 2011