Waiting Room, The Southbank, Melbourne

8 Recommended

Drinks 9 Ambience 9 Service 9 Value 5

I visited my "local" The Waiting Room last week. This is Neil Perry's lounge bar that is located in the lobby of the Crown Hotel at the Queensbridge Street entrance. I go in there rather often and I was a bit shocked to see all but one of the staff have turned over. I have always been under the assumption that The Waiting Room should be called "The Training Room" as the staff seem to make an exodus to the other Neil Perry restaurants (Spice Temple, Rockpool Bar & Grill and soon to be Rosetta) next door after putting in their time at this place.

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Sep 11, 2012

9.5 Highly Recommended

Drinks 8 Ambience 10 Service 10 Value 10

Opposite a swanky colonnaded lobby where guests often drive up in Rolls Royce, deposit luggage emblazoned with designer signage and strut across a marbled floor to drop the cash in the glitzy gambling, shopping or restaurant precinct of Crown Casino, the Waiting Room is a world away from Melbourne’s brooding laneway bar culture. Its frontage is somewhat unassuming — a scattering of low lounge chairs and a series of high perches. Beyond this front area, wave goodbye to conservatism and hipster grunge. It’s a veritable jewel box of a bygone era, with all the accoutrement of LA bling-bling, overlaid with the more refined air of New York glam.

A dazzling wall of tessellated glass cascades over a bar that conjures some very fine cocktails inspired by the grand hotels of US, Europe and old Asia. The drinks are complemented by an equally excellent and extensive food menu canvassing a Spanish-influenced tapas brief, as well as heavier fare (see suggestions below). Since its opening in late 2010, the Waiting Room has been a steadfast nightspot favourite of MoMo & Coco. And just one year after its opening, the Waiting Room now offers a spectacular daily afternoon tea.

In a dining landscape flooded with mass-produced, carelessly-executed, exorbitantly-priced cubic zirconias of afternoon teas, the Waiting Room’s interpretation is a sparkling diamond. Indeed, it’s a well-packaged, well-priced jewellery box of an experience, a glamorous yet intimate venue, complemented by staff who are of a consistently, very polished service standard, and who deliver a gem of an afternoon tea, the highlights being a carefully-considered tea menu and some very exquisite sweet irresistibles.

Overlooking a few early-day black-spotted inclusions in the facets (being admittedly, mostly personal pedantries of ours), the Waiting Room’s afternoon tea is comparable to those offered at fine establishments in London. Forgoing the proverbial “patience is a virtue,” damn patience and damn virtue. Shimmy into that dress, slide on those heels, drape those necklaces, bypass all those run-of-the-mill, timed-seating, chronically-claustrophobic afternoon teas at other Melbourne establishments. In most elegant style, impatiently hurry to the Waiting Room. It’s arguably, the afternoon tea that Melbourne has been waiting for.