LOCATIONMelbourne CBD
PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAThis is urban chic hotel dining at its best. The Westin’s Allegro restaurant is a spacious, uncluttered and airy room with a view onto Collins Street treetops, and fabulous artwork all around. Walk upstairs to admire Carlier Makigawa’s chandeliers, and check out the Bill Henson Paris Opera series photographs on your way into the restaurant. The location is terrific – near Fed Square, the Regent and the Athenaeum theatres, with some top notch shopping at the hotel’s ground level. The lobby lounge is a great place to rest over coffee or tea, and the bar is even better, especially in the evenings for an end-of-day catch up.
Allegro does all the things you’d expect from a hotel restaurant – three meals a day, fairly good service, a well-chosen wine list (it’s not cheap but few good wine lists are) and so on. Where Allegro exceeds expectations is in its sharing platters, perfect for pre-theatre dining. Each platter has three small dishes – an entree, main and dessert if you choose. The menu changes often so it’s hard to recommend particular dishes, but the quail with coconut salad and the salad of rocket, roasted pear and blue cheese were both almost too good to share. Main courses often have some sweet notes – a hint of vanilla in the salmon sauce, a port syrup for the veal. And at Sunday lunchtime, there’s live jazz as well.
Rita Erlich, December 2007
