Marlowe, the Southside team’s love letter to Australia’s past, is opening soon on Fish Lane
A heritage-listed apartment block will soon house a brand-new concept from one of Brisbane’s most exciting restaurant operators. Fanda Group – the team behind Southside, Central and Rick Shores – is in the process of transforming part of an iconic building into Marlowe, an ambitious produce-driven bistro offering a nostalgia-laced take on Australian dining in the heart of Fish Lane. Here’s what we know …
The last 12 months have been somewhat of a blur for Fanda Group. The acclaimed hospitality crew behind Fish Lane restaurant Southside and Rick Shores in Burleigh Heads celebrated the opening of two new concepts during this period – smash-hit Hong Kong-inspired subterranean restaurant Central and striking Latin American-influenced dining destination Norté (and its rooftop bar sibling Sueño).
This September, Australian-inspired bistro Marlowe will join the Fanda fold. Housed inside a heritage-listed apartment block on the corner of Merivale Street and Fish Lane known as Merivale Flats, Marlowe will transform a number of units into distinct character-filled dining and bar spaces, spread across two levels.
It’s a bold undertaking – one roughly two-and-a-half years in the making. Enamoured with the building’s potential, the Fanda crew were eager to take on the challenge and create something that could do the site justice. But it wasn’t until the team linked up with British-born Ollie Hansford (who joins as head chef and co-owner after stints at Gauge, Stokehouse Q and several Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK), that the group made headway on a concept that fit.
“It’s a venue that needed to be led by an amazing chef, so when we connected with Ollie about the space we felt like there was something there and it was something that was going to work,” explains Fanda Group director David Flynn.
At its core, Marlowe is a restaurant couched in a sense of time and place. Here, Australian cuisine will be examined through a nostalgia-coated lens, with Ollie taking inspiration from vintage Australian cookbooks (like Ross Dobson’s iconic tome of revived Australian classics, The Lost Recipes) to craft a menu of comforting home-style dishes.
“Because of the nature of the building – the intricacies of the different rooms – it just felt very homely,” says Ollie. “We wanted to pay respects to the heritage of the building and, with my cooking background, it felt very natural to go down the route of a bistro through an Australian lens. It seemed very unjust if we were to put any other cuisine in there.”
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“I think the best way to describe it is that we want to touch on points of familiarity from our childhood or from meals at our grandmother’s place – at once a bit decadent and a bit indulgent, but also very familiar and welcoming,” adds David. “The space has a lot of character – it feels of an era. We hope that the food taps into the same feeling of homeliness and nostalgia that the space does.”
Marlowe’s menu will be produce driven, with Ollie drawing upon a network of local suppliers and farmers to amass a larder of hyper-seasonal ingredients – we’re talking Urban Valley mushrooms, jumbo yabbies from Gympie, heritage-breed chickens from Joyce’s Gold and Chauvel Wagyu.
“If you have great ingredients and great produce, let that be the star,” says Ollie. “I know that many people say this, but if you start with great produce, there’s very little that you have to do to make it shine.”
This approach will result in dishes like prawn-cocktail tartlet with classic marie rose, braised-duck pie on a bed of radicchio jam, with jus poured table-side, yabby-crowned surf and turf, coral trout Wellington with caviar-butter sauce, mixed grill platters, and trifle layered with rhubarb jelly, macadamia sponge and custard. A dedicated raw bar will dispense freshly shucked oysters and seafood carved to order, while a woodfire hearth custom-built by Sam Fraraccio – aka The Brick Chef – will be put to use across Marlowe’s entire offering.
“Everything on the menu will, at some stage, touch that flame – whether it’s the direct heat, the embers or the smoke,” explains Ollie.
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On the drinks front, Fanda Group beverage director Peter Marchant has assembled a 150-reference wine list that champions Australian wine from established makers and emerging and next-generation producers. In addition to the main list, guests will be able to sample a number of verticals from some top-tier producers, exploring different vintages from the same block, with a special by-the-glass section offering 25 drops via Coravin.
“As a venue that purports to be all about showcasing things that have a sense of place, it makes sense that we have a bit of a focus on Australian wine,” says David. “But the other thing that we’re also wanting to showcase is different eras of Australian wine – not necessarily having a huge breadth of producers, but picking some producers and then going deep on the verticals with them.”
“We’re not just showcasing a place, but showcasing moments in time, which I think is quite interesting.”
The Fanda Group has once again teamed up with award-winning design studio J.AR Office and Lowry Group for Marlowe’s look and fit-out. The team will be spotlighting existing elements like the horsehair-plaster ceiling and cosy sunrooms, crafting intimate dining nooks out of the former units.
“There were core ideas that we all instinctively had and we all agreed on from the outset,” says David. “We completely trust [Jared Webb of J.AR Office] to do his thing, but there were a lot of design decisions that were made for us, because of the beautiful existing features of the space.
“But one thing that Jared has definitely brought into the design is creating a slightly different personality in each space – each of them have their own distinct layout and colour scheme.”
Though the group initially envisioned Marlowe opening before Central and Norté, the team believes that the extended gestation period has resulted in something beyond special.
“The nature of dealing with a project in a heritage-listed site – combined with the grand ambition of what we’re doing with it – means it just takes time,” says David.
“It gave me the opportunity to research and see these different suppliers that nobody else is using, that we can kind of bring to this venue and solidify it as a Brisbane venue,” adds Ollie. “Anybody that comes to Marlowe, I want them to feel welcomed and feel that a lot of love has been poured into, not only the menu and fit-out, but the why behind the products we’re using.”
Marlowe is set to open in the second half of September – keep your eyes peeled for a look inside in the coming months.