A Melbourne dining room built on fire, patience and a little theatre
Outback Gourmet Grill opened on the Southbank promenade with a simple ambition: a grill restaurant good enough to stand beside the country's best, attached to the energy of Crown Melbourne's casino floor.
From a six-table grill to a Southbank institution
The house began as a modest charcoal grill behind the market. Two decades, three dining rooms and one casino partnership later, the fire hasn't moved an inch — it's just better fed.
The first grill
Six tables, one charcoal pit and a chalkboard menu behind Queen Victoria Market.
Southbank move
The dining room relocates to Whiteman Street; the cellar program begins in earnest.
Crown partnership
Doors open inside the Crown complex — restaurant, lounge and private gaming salon combined.
Today
Five hundred covers a night, a two-glass wine list and a kitchen that still cooks only over live coals.
The original dining room, 2004 · from the house archive
Raw produce, strict geometry
Our cooking looks simple because the complicated part happened earlier — in the soil, the tide, the paddock and the coolroom.
The chef's history
Elena Vasseur spent twelve years between Paris and San Sebastián before trading Michelin whites for Victorian coals. Her rule: nothing on the plate that can't name its farm.
Farmers we call by name
O'Connor beef, Daylesford vegetables, Flinders Island lamb, Corner Inlet seafood — the supplier list is printed on the back of every menu.
% produce within 400km
Freezers on the line
% cooking over ironbark
Three rules the kitchen never breaks
Fire decides, not the clock
A steak leaves the grill when it's ready, not when the ticket says so. We plan service around the coals, never the reverse.
If it travelled far, it had better be worth it
Champagne, Parmigiano, Jerez sherry — imports earn their place or they don't come in. Everything else grows within a day's drive.
The last plate matters as much as the first
Table 42 at 10:45pm gets the same fire, the same butter and the same attention as the 6pm regulars. Consistency is the whole job.
— Elena Vasseur
The people behind the pass
Forty-two people run this house each night — here are the four who set its course.
Elena Vasseur
Executive Chef
Twelve years in Europe's best kitchens; the voice of the fire here since 2018.
Marcus Devereux
Head Sommelier
Built the 400-label cellar from a single shelf of Barossa shiraz.
Priya Nair
Head of Pastry
Runs the dawn bake and the wattleseed sphere — the dessert Melbourne photographs.
Daniel Moretti
Bar Director
Keeper of the vermouth wall and the reason the late menu exists.
"We cook like the room is full of critics, because one day it always is."
The sustainability ledger
We publish our footprint the way we publish our menu — openly, with numbers instead of slogans.
Farm partners on record
- O'Connor Pastoral, Gippsland — beef since 2011
- Musk's Farm, Daylesford — heirloom vegetables
- Corner Inlet Fishery — daily line-caught seafood
- Bridgewater Mill Dairy — butter and cream
% less water
per cover since 2019, via closed-loop prep systems
% green power
of kitchen energy from the Crown solar purchase agreement
% waste diverted
from landfill through composting and whole-animal butchery
Awards we don't take for granted
Recognition is never the goal — but it does keep the team honest, and the framed certificates do look rather good on the corridor to the restrooms.
Two Chef Hats
Australian Good Food Guide — held consecutively since 2021.
Wine List of the Year
Two glasses, national awards — 2024 and 2026.
Best Steakhouse VIC
Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards, top five three years running.
Tourism Excellence
Victorian Tourism Awards — gold in dining experiences, 2025.
Every surface has a maker
The room was built by people who sign their work — the plaster was trowelled by hand, the tables milled from a single fallen blackwood, the plates thrown by a Melbourne ceramicist.
Walls by Atelier Fume
Lime plaster in seven passes, burnished to catch candlelight.
Furniture by Northwood & Co
Chairs steam-bent in Brunswick, upholstered in Victorian wool.
Ceramics by Mira Collis
Every plate individually glazed; no two leave the kitchen identical.
A dining room that doubles as a gallery
Each year we invite one Australian artist to take over the walls. Their work hangs for twelve months, then the room resets — guests dine inside a rolling exhibition.
Artist in residence, 2026
Sienna Marlow — large-format photographic studies of the Victorian coastline, printed on cotton rag and hung unframed so the walls breathe.
One visual language, three crafts
Menu typography, uniform tailoring and interior finishes are all cut from the same brief — restraint, texture and nothing that shouts.
"The best design in a restaurant is the part you never notice."
Books that built the menu
Three titles live permanently on the pass — sauce-stained, spine-cracked and argued over nightly.
"Read widely, cook narrowly. The library is for ideas; the grill is for restraint."
— Elena's note inside the kitchen copy
The Food of Spain
Where the obsession with live fire and minimal intervention began.
On Food and Cooking
McGee's science, consulted whenever the ferment lab gets ambitious.
The Wines of Australia
The book Marcus bought with his first sommelier pay cheque.
Fair questions
Everything else lives on the full FAQ — or ask us directly on the contacts page.