O’Connell’s Hotel & Restaurant
Cnr Montague & Coventry Streets, Sth. Melbourne VIC
03 9699 9600
http://www.oconnells.com.au

 

Some years ago on the Hungry Hinch I wrote about a welcome culinary phenomenon: the excellent restaurant burgeoning at the back of a run-down pub. Suddenly, chicken in a basket (with a slice of pineapple), fries, and roast beef sandwich counter lunches were out. The spartan bistros serving overcooked vegetables and chicken parmigiana were also passé.

The upmarket restaurant hidden behind a pub’s façade reached its zenith with the award-winning Circa at the Prince of Wales in St. Kilda. But one of the first I wrote about was the trailblazing O’Connell’s at the bottom end of Montague Street in South Melbourne.

Not any easy place to  find. But the smartest, surest way is to go down Canterbury Parade and – as the billboard says at the Park Street intersection—keep going down and turn left on Coventry Street.

With all those dead ends in South Melbourne it is worth keeping in mind.

To my mind  O’Connell’s  was one of the first inner city hotels which not only had a restaurant as  well as a bistro and bar service under one roof  but was one of the first  hotels to have a genuinely high class  restaurant nestling alongside the bar and bistro.

And in the late 1980s and early 1990s it had an energetic and clever ( not to mention  beautiful restaurant  manager named  Julie Howe) who attracted  good staff and was like flypaper for customers who liked  classy food in a good atmosphere. Especially advertising and media types.

I used to go there quite often when doing HINCH  at Channel  Seven where our studios were in South Melbourne.

That was in the Eighties. In recent years I have some other fond  foodie and professional memories of the place.

In the late 1990s – when I was hibernating and doing a Grizzly Adams impersonation in Mount Macedon – I was invited down the mount to meet radio exec Vern Stone. We lunched at O’Connell’s and he offered me a job with 3AK.

I declined and instead went off for a stint in breakfast radio in Adelaide . Well, believe it or not the pay was about four times as much and the perks not bad either,. And I WAS broke.

Hadn’t been back to  O’Connell’s until eighteen months  after my return to Melbourne and a sudden sacking from 3AW after a year doing Nightline.

I was invited to  O’Connell’s yet again by  3AK. This time by the then general manager Greg Flood. The main restaurant was closed for the Christmas holidays  but we had a pleasant meal in the bistro by the bar. And I accepted until my return several years later to 3AW.

Maybe with that radio thread that is why I decided to take my staff and colleagues there for a celebratory dinner after a good ratings win. And I’ve been back several times since.

It’s still as good. They’ve spruced up the restaurant (yet again) and it still has a great ambience. And you can dine light or heavy. Plenty of big meats and several fish dishes like Atlantic salmon and scallops dusted with  almond chips.

 Recently, I had a huge bowl of tasty bacon and leek soup and a side order of cauliflower with cheese and crunchy garlic croutons which the vegetarian Mrs. Nosebag enjoyed so much she wants to have it as a main course next time.

One entrée didn’t work for me. ‘Chicken and coriander spring rolls’.  They’d been split in half and stacked in logs.  Maybe would have been appreciated by anybody who didn’t like coriander because I couldn’t taste any. Good dipping sauce though.

The most popular dish that seemed to be sprinting out of the kitchen on a cold, wintry night was a beef and Guinness pie.

O’Connell’s has an enticing dessert list and the petit fours are a satisfying ‘mini-dessert’.

To sum up: Good food. Good atmosphere – but bring back two things. Bring back the bread sticks and bring back Miss Howe.

June 20, 2007