A tour of Natural History Bar & Grill

The brief

The space, housed within a newly refurbished 1940s office block in Melbourne’s CBD, is McGlone’s tribute to the Mid-century steakhouses of New York City, as well as an institution closer to home.

“I’ve always considered what Neil Perry did with Rockpool to be the benchmark of the modern steakhouse, not just in Australia but the world,” the chef says.

Photo by Eugene Hyland

An all-day restaurant

Natural History’s bar menu will run from noon each day and throughout the night, offering snacks such as crudités or charcuterie, all the way through to minute steak.

“You can come in for a $20 cheeseburger or you can come in for a tin of caviar,” McGlone says. “We’re getting our caviar through Lisa Downs, who’s the chief caviar person at Simon Johnson. First up is Sterling caviar from America. We’ll be doing a traditional service with steamed egg whites, egg yolk, crème fraîche and beautiful freshly-made blinis. The one thing I’ve had problems with in the past is you only get eight blinis for your whole tin of caviar. If you order caviar, you deserve another round of blinis.

“We’ll be sourcing our charcuterie from Troy [Wheeler] at Meatsmith, who’ll be making a lot of it custom. We’ve just worked on a duck mortadella with chunks of duck fat and peppercorns throughout.”

Photo by Eugene Hyland

The look

Interior designer Michael Delany has overseen the fit-out, which he describes as intentionally old-fashioned. Drawing on 1940s references and Grand Central Oyster Bar in Manhattan, Delany opted for vinyl table coverings, a red-and-black checkerboard floor and a glass-topped bar under which old matchboxes sit, carrying the logos and taglines of now-defunct businesses.

“The train station restaurant is a touchstone for the whole place,” he says. “Somewhere that’s different things at different times of the day, with lots of different people coming past. Somewhere a little bit rowdy.”

Photo by Eugene Hyland

500gm Rangers Valley rib-eye

“Obviously because we are a modern steakhouse, meat is important,” McGlone says. “There’s a lot of grass-fed beef from O’Connor and whatever we can get from David Blackmore. I’m keen to get inside skirt on the menu and, in winter, some tongue or beef shin.

“People can choose from hot English mustard, Dijon mustard, horseradish cream, béarnaise or thyme jus, and then there’s a few things – like the hanger – that have a sauce on the side.”

Photo by Ben Woods

Chocolate mousse and coffee

“Desserts-wise we’re going to go super classic. We’ve been really lucky to get a French pastry chef. She’s really gifted and super classical.

“Coffee and chocolate: I think that’s a really cool thing. I like my desserts more savoury. The covering is close to a ganache, then there’s chocolate mousse underneath and on the base is a pailleté feuilletine of coffee and chocolate. And on the side, we’ve made a coffee ice-cream using Code Black coffee, which is what we’re using in the café too.”

Photo by Ben Woods

The dioramas

And then there are the dioramas. Perhaps the most-talked about feature of the restaurant, their ambitious scale and attention-to-detail warrant the attention. Artist Vanja Zaric is the woman behind the 15-metre installation that runs down the length of the restaurant, displaying three distinct environments including mountain forest and outer space.

Photo by Eugene Hyland

401 cheesecake

“It’s a real old school recipe of baked cheesecake. We use softly whipped cream from Rachel Needoba of Guendulain Farm in Gippsland. It’s super thick. The cherries were some of the season’s last and we macerated them in cassia bark and other spices, plus a magnum of [Tommy Ruff] Poolside.

We’re keeping everything really seasonal. It’ll be great to work with certain farms and ask “can you grow this for us?” That’s kind of the way we worked at Husk.”

Photo by Ben Woods

The sides

“My pick out of the sides is the beetroot with lemon verbena oil. The beets are coming from Somerset Heritage Produce. We’re salt-baking the larger ones overnight on a low heat and pressure cooking the smaller ones. Then we’re pickling the stems to fold through the verbena oil in the dressing. Over the top, we’re putting a pistachio and herb pistou and zested lemon.”

Photo by Ben Woods