Out for lunch: Mod-Cantonese at The New Albert Park Hotel

I’m unsure whether I feel worse for The Albert Park Hotel or myself. A few days after the 138-year-old pub reopened in March 2020, COVID patient 16 disembarked a plane from Singapore and promptly attended one of the venue’s first events. It shut for two weeks, reopening just in time for the restaurant lockdown.

Then there’s me. It’s a stunner of a day, the dregs of summer in autumn. We’re at the hotel restaurant, Happy Valley, and I can’t order the Peking duck which takes three days to make and mirrors a 600-year-old recipe from the Ming Dynasty. You see, I married a pescatarian. I can’t commit when we dine out (to the siu yuk free-range roast pork, or any other meats, that is).

The Colonial Leisure Group purchased the hotel in 2014, enlisting Six Degrees Architects to complete the multimillion-dollar refit. Light floods through the four-storey atrium past floating paper lanterns and onto an indoor fig tree and handsome, wooden bar. Sapphire-blue carpet lushes up the main dining room with its original red brick columns, while upstairs the cane and rattan furniture is straight from my favourite Pinterest board.

When a supple, springy egg-white omelette arrives in a spanner crab shell, all buttery meat and seduction, I forget about my lack of meat. It’s the same for tender salt-and-pepper calamari beneath a tropical snowfall of coconut flakes, bird’s eye chilli and fried curry leaves. We double down on prawns: Spencer Gulfs in weighty har gow dumplings and a Skull Island special fried in salted egg yolk.

The oversized crayfish and scallop dumpling is worth every one of its 13 dollars. It’s only after we’ve shared it that I learn its pool of “superior broth” is simmered for 24 hours; a mixture of dried fish, shrimp and – whoops – various meats. I won’t tell him if you don’t.

85 Dundas Place, Albert Park
thealbertpark.com.au

What’s nearby?

The butter chicken and lamb vindaloo pies at Mr Brownie Rooftop Hotel, South Melbourne, have proved so popular that owner Jessi Singh (also Daughter In Law and Mrs Singh) has added more for the AFL season. The menu and funky fit-out at this four-storey, mod-British Indian curry pub are also worth checking out.

themrbrownie.com