a RAMVEK project 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Sundays at the Geebung Polo Club were legendary. Prior to the smoking ban, long, boozy summer afternoons extended into long, boozy summer nights and, inevitably, resulted in some long, snoozy Mondays with a sore head. But the point is, this was the Open Door Pub Company, headed up by directors Craig Ellison and Michael Thiele, creaming it — open the doors, turn on the taps.

That was the early to mid noughties, but it may as well be a generation ago. Pubs can’t simply operate as beer barns any longer. Yes, there’s still the Friday and Saturday peak periods, but you can’t bank on those to the exclusion of every other day of the week. Food is now crucial in attracting trade and keeping the tills ticking over.

Interestingly, you won’t hear too much misty-eyed nostalgia from Craig about the ‘roll out the barrel’ days. He and Michael have matured almost in sync with the marketplace. No longer in their early 30s with a ‘burning the candle at both ends’, crash-through work ethic… Craig wouldn’t mind a venue in the portfolio he’d quite like to spend a Saturday evening at as a punter.

The Dutchess is it. Mature, sophisticated, but not up itself.

You’d best describe the Dutchess as a supper club. Not a niche well served by Australian venues, a supper club provides restaurant food at all hours and mixes in some nightclub glamour and music. It’s a venue you can spend a night at without feeling you’re missing out on some dancing, or a special cocktail or a superior menu — they’ll do it all. Or, they won’t do any of it particularly well.

Craig: “Was it a gamble? I don’t think so. It was actually a straight forward offer really, at least from a steak restaurant perspective: Rockpool-quality meat at half the price. But it’s a different offer to anything else in Melbourne, so in that regard we did go out on a limb a little.”

Some perspective: Dutchess sits atop a corner    CBD property headlined by the groundfloor Duke. It’s the old Duke of Wellington site in Melbourne. As venue tells the story in Issue 55, the pub lay fallow for a number of years before Open Door were allowed to get its teeth stuck into a refurb worthy of the prime position.

When it opened, the public bar was all you’d hope it to be, an everyman’s establishment with an enormous bar, dozens of big screens for televised sport, and a menu replete with counter meal favourites. Predictably, the Melbourne public took to it like a seagull takes to a hot chip.

The Level One wine bar soon followed. Smaller, moodier, more intimate… it’s a place you can enjoy Grange by the glass without feeling like a prat.

Upstairs, on Level Two, is the Dutchess. Always planned as something ‘a bit special’ it took Open Door places it had never been.

Craig Ellison: “We spent an extra $250 a square metre on the finish. It had to be a step up from the other two levels. We also focussed on a few other key areas to give the venue a premium feel: The music would be really important; the lighting had to be spot on; the service would have to exceptional; the bar and cocktails would need to offer something different; and the look would be darker and more glamorous.”

Incredibly, the Dutchess does indeed have its own personality and energy distinct from the rest of the property. Any operator will tell you how hard this is to execute.

The Dutchess attracts a cashed up, 25-plus crowd who have bothered to dress up and are looking to have a great time. And, amazingly, the clientele are skewed 60/40 in favour of the fairer sex. Not bad for a steak restaurant!

John Mikulic, Director of Newline Design was again given the job of ‘Designer in Chief’. He’s done a tremendous job, working hand in glove with long-time construction collaborators Ramvek. Booths are the seating du jour. But not your average slide in/out booths, but the luxury of a cream-leather horseshoe design. Each feels like a VIP lounge. And they’re low enough to encourage interaction, as you gaze around at who else is lucky enough to be settling into a night of Dutchess indulgence.

If the leather of the booths reminds you of a Rolls Royce cabin, then the lacquered timber tables and surrounds are like the dashboard. Elsewhere, high quality timber keep leading the way, no more evident than in the block work feature wall. Painstakingly selected and configured, the wall is wonderful to behold and and helps break up the room acoustics in a pleasant way.

If repeat business is the best sign of a satisfied customer, then Ramvek is doing plenty right. Ramvek’s Project Manager Ross Dunn, dropped by for a chat with venue, taking time out from another Open Door Pub Company worksite — the  James Squire Brewhouse at The Portland Hotel, around the corner in Russell Street.

The feature wall is certainly a Ross Dunn favourite: “Constructing it was a two-month process, organising the timber and colour, and devising how best to put it together. It’s a cypress pine, and it’s definitely something unique; something distinctive.”

Often we’ll pull out the sound as a box item adjunct in a story like this, but the audio is especially pivotal to the success of the Dutchess. Open Door deliberately broke the piggy bank, knowing that a superlative music and audio experience was a cornerstone.

Craig Ellison: “We spent around $100,000 on the audio. More than we’d ever spent on sound. But it was something we’d observed on our trip to New York: the sound has to be exciting but not interfere with conversation.”

This is a tricky balance but can be achieved with high quality loudspeaker systems that have super-low distortion, coupled to professional amplification (in this case CXD amps from QSC), and a design that places a good number of smaller speakers around the venue to ensure an even sound coverage without hotspots. The result is a sound system that is crisp, exciting, yet remains impossible to pinpoint — it’s simply ‘there’ while you enjoy your conversation and meal.

Justin Mackay and Chris McDowall from Disco Doctors deserve a special commendation. The success of this sound system is down to great ears and a determination to achieve perfection. In this case the small-format DD6 speakers are from Martin Audio, one of a handful of top-class loudspeaker systems that could have achieved similar results.

This is a concept venue that requires deep pockets to launch and steely determination to see through. After a slow launch in December (“everyone had already committed to other venues for their Christmas functions”) and a predictably slow January, Dutchess only hit its straps in March. It must have been some nerve-wracking months for Craig, Michael, Justin Wise the Executive Chef, Venue Manager Ben Hehir and his team.

Craig Ellison: “We were determined to stick to our guns, and maintain the integrity of our offering throughout. For instance, there’s no point cancelling the DJ on a Tuesday if your concept is to have a late night dining and music venue seven days a week. We had some staffing flexibility thanks to the venues downstairs but we also needed to maintain a commitment to a higher level of service throughout. The design of the venue means we can’t pull all the chairs out and host a wedding. But that sort of discipline is a good thing. I think as soon as a restaurant deviates too much from its vision, it loses its identity. The Dutchess’s identity is really important to us.”

You get the feeling that Craig has quite a bit more invested in the Dutchess than Open Door capital. And there’s more than a little personal satisfaction in its success: “Has it worked for us? Absolutely. Totally. Massively!”