EAT > Lollo (14/20)

Lollo is a hotel restaurant. There I have said it straight up. And as is the case with many hotel restaurants there are some good and some not so good aspects of that come from being part of a very large hospitality venue and a global hotel chain.

Lollo sits fashionably on Melbourne’s Flinders Lane in the relatively new W hotel, it is a smart venue, acoustics are good, the lighting – appropriately dim, the music was fun, the table linen was lovely and the food looked interesting. This was lifted even more when I examined the wine list which is fascinating and has some wonderful treats on it.

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They offer a chef’s selection at $85 per head or to select à la carte, which is what we chose.

Now for my second admission, this was a last minute booking because I stuffed up what looked like an amazing Burgundy wine dinner booking hosted by the Prince Wine Store at Bellota (it is not the first time this has happened to me – are you listening Alex Wilcox?) and so instead of going to a very promising dinner I was hunting around for a new restaurant on a Wednesday night.

Lollo looked interesting and I really had not noticed that it was a hotel restaurant until I was walking towards the building, then I made the connection. So enough of the whinging let’s get down to the food and wine.

For some reason our server decided only to give us one menu to share (odd) and there was no explanation of the menu, specials etc.. Rather it was dropped and then later we were asked to order, much as you might expect at cafe. Our entree selection started with the prosciutto, crispy potato with basil emulsion ($12) and these were sensational, really delicious. From there we had crostini with baked brie, tomato, anchovies and basil ($14), a lovely flavour combination but the brie was not baked well so it lacked something. Our final entree dish was a tempura prawn served with saffron and a liberally applied lemon aioli ($15) which was very good.

For drinks we started with a glass of Chardonnay and a Negroni. The service team were very friendly, I had to explain what a Negroni was and when I asked if our waiter could tell me anything about specific wines on the wine list, she told me they were from Gippsland, and that was about three and a half hours away.

Main course I had Osso Bucco, silk pasta sheet, parmesan bechamel and herb pangratto ($42), and I bet in your mind you can picture it. Rich slow cooked chunky meat forked off the bone…. NOPE it was nothing like that, this is a flat lasagne, and sadly it really had little flavour.

My partner had the Tuscan style Murray cod served with capers, olives, mustard greens and bottarga ($52) and it was very good. The fish was perfectly moist and the flavours were good.

We had a very adequate but unremarkable pinot noir (Athlete’s of Wine – ‘Vino Athletico’ Macedon 2021) by the glass ($19) and then we shared an amazing glass of Jim Barry ‘The Armagh’ Shiraz – 2016 ($85). Now if you are still reading and you don’t know the ‘Armagh’ then you probably just fell of your chair at the price but this is a wine that retails for $450 a bottle and it was a generous pour so that made it an excellent choice to share and finish a pleasant but not amazing meal.

Highlights for Lollo are the wine list and that Prosciutto (oh wow). There were a couple of clearly experienced service staff but the rest had little experience of fine dining.

Lowlights the Osso Bucco – it was lasagne and not a very tasty one. As a hotel restaurant it is great. As a fine dining restaurant in Melbourne a city of amazing fine dining, it was a bit of a miss (14/20).

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