Kristoffer Paulsen
The ‘Good Australian Hotel Restaurants’ trend gains further traction at this all-day, street-level bistro at Southbank’s new Hannah St Hotel. Coupette is one of five venues at the hotel being operated by The Mulberry Group (Lilac, Hazel, Dessous) and tracks with the group’s DNA: great design, elevated casual food and a drinks list as committed to good times as it is good booze.
As with Hellenika at Brisbane’s The Calile, Bar Julius at The Eve in Sydney and Marmelo at Hyde Melbourne Place, Coupette is targeted at locals as much as hotel guests. Its food and drink menus highlight local produce (a perfectly cooked snapper fillet, served with clams, charred sugarloaf cabbage and textbook beurre blanc, is from Port Phillip Bay), while the room’s casually glamorous design by Melbourne-based Flack Studios, taps into a local fondness for Euro-style dining rooms with its palette of timber, brass, mirrors, banquettes and travertine.
The food, from executive chef Andrew Beddoes and head chef David Warne, is as handsome as the room. Freshly shucked oysters arrive plated with pastels, a pale pink mignonette, cheeks of both lemon and lime. A superb spanner crab salad, the meat mixed with crayfish oil, apple and lardo, wrapped in thin turnip slivers and finished with a pretty oyster, buttermilk and onion oil sauce is a skilful balance of flavours and textures. Côte de porc, a satisfyingly juicy brined pork chop, is served with mustard fruit, honey, vinegar and pinenut and a pale green tarragon mustard. There’s no reinvention of the wheel on this menu, but the wheels are all finely calibrated.
The service is never less than charming but, as is the case with many newly opened restaurants, can be a touch wobbly. There are gaps in knowledge, particularly around the drinks list, something that needs to be addressed in a restaurant that’s as intent on attracting local regulars as FIFO travellers.
Well-suited to Coupette’s elevated bistro vibe, the drinks list benchmarks Old World wines with Victorian producers from across the state and takes cocktails seriously, both with well-made classics and house originals that highlight Australian distillers and native ingredients like Geraldton wax.
A great addition to the good hotel restaurant trend and, in fact, Melbourne’s current infatuation with comfortingly familiar bistros, Coupette has landed feeling right at home.
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