Butcher's Grill

141 Bourke St
Melbourne 3000
Ph: (03) 9639 1222

Butcher's Grill has one restaurant strangely located on Bourke Street. Even when you intentionally look for it, it's hard to find. The front facade is quite small and doesn't look like a restaurant.

Once you step inside though, you feel like you're transported to a Victorian era building. The furnishings are extremely classical and feel very opulent. The restaurant did have a slightly stale smell like when you don't air a room.



Once seated at the very grand table, we ordered drinks. We were quite early and the room was basically empty, but that didn't mean that we could get the waiters attention. It strange when that happens.



We decided on the two mixed platters of meat and seafood to share. The meat platter consisted of a variety of sausages, lamb, chicken and beef cuts. It was all quite good, but nothing particularly leapt out at you.


The seafood platter consisted of oysters kilpatrick, calamari, scallops, fish fillets and garlic prawns. I liked the oysters and scallops best. Again, everything was quite good, but the seafood wasn't exceptionally fresh or memorable.


There wasn't much of an ambience to speak of in there, with hardly any customers. It was strangely quiet for a Friday night. I like the dining room and decorations, but the table we were seated at for six was big enough to sit 12 and made talking hard without raising one's voice.

The service was very patchy. I don't know if they restaurant is aiming to be high end dining or not. Like the menu, the service was a mish mash of occasionally being attentive when they kept asking how the food was, to not bothering to pour our waters or being hard to flag down when trying to order second rounds of drinks.

We decided to forgo the desserts and head to Nobu in Crown for desserts instead. The chocolate bento box was desirably decadant and moist (where my Nigella fans at, I copied that phrase from her). It was a winning combination of chocolatey goodness and green tea freshness.


The dessert platter was very nice and consisted of an interesting mixture of small bites. There was quite a number of Asian type desserts like sesame cream, green tea sponge, coconut ice cream etc all mixed together to give some tasty desserts.


Overall Rating: 12/20, The food was quite good with service a bit mixed.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20:Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.