Saint & Rogue — Restaurant in Melbourne

Regular visitors to Melbourne. Often prowling the streets and alleys looking for interesting menus. Saint & Rouge, Little Collins St and just up from Spencer Street. Beef cheeks. Not something you often see advertised below the equator. Indicates (to us) a chef looking outside the square. Worth a closer look.

Tuesday evening, no booking. No booking, no problem. It’s a two storied venue, downstairs, pub … upstairs restaurant. Downstairs not very busy but quite noisy. Hard floors, hard walls, hard ceiling. Dining room upstairs, moderately busy, not quite so noisy. Hard floors, hard walls, hard high pitch roof (no ceiling). Tudor style (??) with dining alcoves plus some freestanding tables.

One garlic bread, one beef cheek, one pie of the day (steak and Guinness), and umm, ahh … a side to go with the mains … not much being offered … we settle for the fries.

Garlic bread ok. Beef cheeks excellent. Steak and Guinness pie very good. Fries edible. Couple of wines by the glass, as expected.

It’s four stars, an 80% overall from us. The garlic bread was 60%, the beef cheek 100%, the steak and Guinness pie 90% the fries 40% and the hot food was all served on hot plates … bravo … we hate hot food on cold plates. Beyond the food, the service was pleasant and smiley, the venue was a little noisy but not offensive, the limited range of any interesting veg’ and salads to go with the mains was a definite minus and the $13.00 (THIRTEEN DOLLARS) bowl of below average fries as the only fries size option, was ridiculous. We didn’t try any of the “small plates” apart from the just above average garlic bread.

Dining is highly subjective. We are well traveled, not price sensitive … but very “picky”. Give this place a try … you will struggle to find significantly better but could easily do...

As I had not been to the Saint & Rogue before, I booked our Executive team in for a lunch based purely off the reviews....risky choice but this place did not disappoint!

Very good service from the moment we walked in but it was the food for me....when you can elevate clean, simple, fresh ingredients with restraint so the natural flavours of each element shine, you know you're doing something right.

We ordered side serves of the salmon gravalax, mushroom and truffle croquettes and chargrilled eggplant...incredibly delicious, the salmon was the best salmon I've had in memory...little bite-sized cubes that just melted in the mouth. There is such a level of skill involved to take a thick piece of salmon and cure it to perfection to achieve a texture that is so mouth-wateringly good. Similarly with the croquettes which on paper could have been competing punchy flavours that could have overwhelmed the palette but were expertly balanced and a true taste sensation.

At the risk of turning this into a tome, the rest of our lunch only got better with each selection rated highly by our group (pie of the day, free-range schnitzel, barramundi fish of the day, with Greek salad).

I'm embarassed to say as a life-long Melbournian, I had never heard of this restaurant before...I may not be alone as the place was near empty on a Tuesday and I can not understand why because the service and food are exceptional. For me personally, I like a quiet venue but a place of this quality should be more well-patroned in my view. I will keep going...

We came to Saint and Rogue for lunch on a Friday and we ordered the beef burgers. When the orders arrived, the beef patties and bread on all orders were completely cold, and the cheese that was supposed to be melted looked like it came straight out of the fridge. We sent the burgers back to the kitchen and some 10 minutes later we received them again, supposedly warmer. They weren’t. It was as if the assembled burgers just sat a bit under the grill and the bread toasted (and got hard and crumbly) and nothing happened on the inside.

We noticed that other tables were sending burgers back to the kitchen as well. The waiter came to apologise and offered us complimentary drinks under the manager’s orders (which we refused due to all having to return to the office) and said that the kitchen was having difficulty in coping with 50 orders of burgers together.

While I understand that peak orders can happen in any restaurant, the fact that simple things like burgers, that are generally mass produced, cannot be delivered properly, makes me worried about their attention and quality of delivery in the rest of the menu items. It highlights to me an issue with the appropriate allocation of staff numbers to deliver the required service. Perhaps the cook was having a bad day? Hard to say... but the end result is still the same.

I will not be returning...