The Residence. Shifting things up a bit. OK a lot.
- Felix Marrow
- 17 hours ago
- 3 min read
If you thought Melbourne’s dining scene was starting to get a little homogenous with its concrete interiors and fermented pear snacks, allow us to introduce you to Residence, a university adjacent stunner shaping up as part restaurant, part culinary sabbatical, part very fancy art gallery kiosk. And we mean this as a compliment.
Tucked inside the Ian Potter Museum of Art on the edge of Parkville’s academic heartland, Residence is less student bar and more Michelin flirtation with a thesis. It’s the brainchild of hospitality veterans Nathen Doyle of Heartattack & Vine, Sunhands and Cameron Earl ex Carlton Wine Room, Embla & ST. ALi, two blokes who’ve clearly spent enough time in restaurants to know that the best ones have a pulse, a story and a bit of ego free brilliance.
But here’s the kicker, the restaurant concept rotates. Every year a new chef moves in, takes the keys and makes it their own. First up in the residency hot seat is Robbie Noble, a Brit who cut his teeth at Lancashire's Northcote Hotel which is Michelin starred and fiercely proper. He turned heads as executive sous at Vue de Monde, and can plate a scallop with the kind of quiet swagger that suggests he knows exactly what he’s doing. He has returned from Clamato, one of Paris’ hottest destinations for seafood and natural wine, after helming the kitchen for two-and-a-half years.
His iteration, dubbed Cherrywood, leans into his West Yorkshire roots, celebrating refined country cooking. This is no deconstructed bangers and mash on a smear of hay ash, more produce led elegance where memory meets minimalism. A deceptively precise hangar of beef, ox tongue and peppercorn oozes delicious like it’s been waiting for you. Devilled egg & smoked eel has the campfire intensity of a fairy tale. And buttered baby cauliflower, lentils & smoked onion that might singlehandedly redeem this vegetable for an entire generation. (This author has such an intense dislike of cauliflower, even Yotam Ottolegnhi couldn't convince me to enjoy it.)
There’s sourdough bread & cultured cream deserving of its own table, wines from small, unpronounceable towns that taste like late summer and licked rocks. And there’s service that’s warm, intuitive and just the right amount of we know this is good but we won’t make a song and dance about it. Did we mention you’re literally eating inside a museum? The space is airy, nay gallery like, but without the cold pretension. It's all natural light, soft timber and a little sense of hush, the kind that makes your first bite feel like an event.
Residence isn’t just a restaurant. It’s a living, breathing chef’s notebook in real time. It’s generous, it’s curious and it’s got just enough arrogance to know it’s special without needing to shout about it.
When you go, not if, order the fish, the bread, whatever wine they’re loving that week and something green because your conscience deserves it. Avoid bringing any kind of friend who doesn’t get modern food and take a hot date if you want to impress someone with taste but not ego. Its well worth the visit.
Residence at the Potter is at Masson Rd, Parkville VIC.
Open Monday & Tuesday for lunch 12-4pm, Weds - Sat 12 noon - 11pm.
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