After a slow start, the Bridge Road restaurant is now pumping most nights of the week with a feel-good menu that makes you glad it’s winter.
Sitting in a cosy corner at Love Letter on a booked-out Wednesday night, it’s difficult to imagine the restaurant’s gruelling early days of opening, two years ago. Some nights there were zero customers, and owner Matty Perry had to urge his collaborators to keep the faith. “It’s going to happen, I promise,” he told his partner and co-owner Tee Cartledge and co-head chef Liam Bellamy at the time.
“I told them to trust me, stick to it. I only half believed it myself, but now we are turning over the restaurant two or three times a night.” What they stuck to was feel-good food served with warmth and joy.
This space has been a restaurant for decades. I remember it as a chic Italian cafe, a Nepali joint and a pan-Asian place, all of which retained the basic set-up with a window bench, long bar and mezzanine dining on the same level as the kitchen. Love Letter’s version of the heritage Victorian shopfront is indie and arty with red neon, old lamps, candles, knick-knacks and a general sense that low-budget is an honourable pathway to good vibes. It feels lived in and loved.
The menu is happily chaotic and highly expressive, as though each dish has been assessed for its ability to make diners awash with a glow from tastebuds to toe. I’ve thought a lot about the shoestring fries smothered in gravy and topped with seared, sliced duck breast. It’s a great example of the food here: beautifully cooked duck, as accomplished as you’d find in any good bistro around town, along with a fondness for the last soggy chip at the bottom of a foil bag of charcoal chicken. I would return for this alone.
Scallops are served in the shell with a mustardy, buttery sauce featuring Keen’s Curry Powder; bougie and bogan at once. Sugarloaf cabbage is charred, roasted and garlic-buttered, sending the humble veg into lascivious territory. Macaroni comes sauced with a beef cheek ragu that makes you glad it’s winter. Yorkshire puds were such a popular side with the Sunday roast (brined turkey with collard greens one week, maybe lamb with lamb-fat potatoes the next) that they’re on the regular menu amped up with melty cheese and chilli oil.
Menu changes take place often, but the “schticky” date pudding is probably bolted on because superfans reserve one when they make a booking. It’s a simple classic, a version of the one that Perry’s great-aunt loved at the Bentleigh RSL, served in a ramekin with whipped cream.
Perry and Bellamy go to Vic Market three times a week to see what their favourite vendors have put aside for them. They turn the spoils into good-value feasting for the $49 feed-me menu on Wednesdays, and steak nights on the Thursday and Friday when you might find a fancy surf’n’turf with wagyu eye-fillet and exquisite Skull Island prawns, or porterhouse with Moreton Bay bug. The approach is over the top, exuberant and generous.
Drinking is adventurous and accessible. I love the Campari served in a mini frosted-glass 1930s bottle for pouring over ice and an orange slice. There’s a wine blackboard with weekly glasses, carafes and bottles listed by colour and weight, which is a nice way to stretch and learn. Most wines make the list after a local winemaker brings them in and chats the team through a tasting.
Service is eager and caring, a love letter enacted for every table. The very idea of fine dining can feel exclusionary, something that other people do, but Love Letter rewrites the template. The restaurant is down-to-earth, personal and cheerily obsessed with making people happy, a fine formula for dining indeed.
Three more restaurants redefining fine dining
Cutler
It opened 13 years ago as Cutler & Co, and chef and co-owner Andrew McConnell has given his flagship a few rethinks over the years. Now it’s simply Cutler, with a poised bistro menu and an all-class no-fuss feeling. Wednesday Cellar Nights mean $30 corkage and shared dishes that match well with Bordeaux and Burgundy.
55-57 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, cutlerandco.com.au
Regale
Cafe empress Sutinee Suntivatana owns Humble Rays and matcha specialist Tori’s, and now also has Regale in the Old Carlton Brewhouse at the top end of the city. The Asian fusion menu includes chicken rigatoni with gochujang vodka sauce and smashed olives, and sticky rice and white chocolate mousse with corn relish.
555 Swanston Street, Carlton, regaler.com.au
The Roe
A backstreet warehouse is now a temple to sea urchin. They’re served raw, rolled up in spring rolls, infused into broths, tucked into fried rice and arranged in colourful bowls with other seafood. An invasive and feral species, eating sea urchins is also conservation.
49-55 Myrtle Street, Glen Waverley, theroe.com.au
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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