Past lives and present plates – Marlowe revives classic Australian dining in South Brisbane
Stepping into Marlowe, the brand-new Fish Lane restaurant from the team behind Central, Rick Shores, Southside and Norté, feels a little bit like coming home. An Australian bistro reimagined for right now, Marlowe channels the warmth of home-style dining, giving classic mid-century Australian dishes a contemporary edge. Celebrating local produce and old-school hospitality in equal measure, Marlowe serves comfort with polish and purpose. Come and take a peek inside …
Any dining experience at a Fanda Group venue is typically going to be a globe-trotting affair. Depending on the restaurant, your taste buds might travel across East or Southeast Asia, or to Latin America and the buzzing streets of central Hong Kong.
Marlowe, the group’s newly minted South Brisbane restaurant, brings things much closer to home.
The stunning bistro plonks diners down in the living room of their grandparents’ abode. Not literally, of course. But that’s the kind of vibe that the Fanda Group brains trust is gunning for with its newest portfolio addition, which is described as an Australian bistro with a sense of familiarity and nostalgia at its core.
Marlowe restaurant resides inside a three-storey heritage-listed brick apartment block on the corner of Merivale Street and Fish Lane known as Merivale Flats. The building’s unassailable location, striking facade and unique layout not only made Merivale Flats a tantalising opportunity for the Fanda Group team, but its status as an enduring remnant of a bygone era made conceptualising the restaurant an easy process.
“When we walked into this space, we knew it had to be an Australian bistro,” says Marlowe’s co-owner and executive chef Ollie Hansford. “We couldn’t do anything different. All of these things just tied so well together.”
“It feels distinctly of an era,” adds Fanda Group director David Flynn. “There’s just not as many buildings of this type in Brisbane as there are in Sydney and Melbourne.”
As far as spaces go, Marlowe’s home is a one-of-one gem. It’s the kind of site that presented some unique structural challenges, to be sure – but it also offered avenues for mould-breaking ingenuity when it came to interior design.
“We certainly weren’t looking to make things hard for ourselves,” says David, with a chuckle. “But I think you get the best outcomes – especially creatively – when you are working within the confines of something.
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“We look for things that have a level of authenticity that you can’t actually create in a cold-shell fit-out. And those are the special moments that then become key features of the fit-out and of the story of the venue.”
Spread across the first two floors, the restaurant has converted four self-contained units into nine interconnected dining and bar spaces. Fanda Group has once again teamed up with award-winning design studio J.AR Office and in-demand construction crew Lowry Group for the venue’s look and fit-out, which meshes classic and contemporary aesthetics to great effect.
The team has preserved the heritage character that echoes the building’s Art-Deco rich grace and elegance. Statement aspects like the horsehair ceilings have been restored and illuminated by custom upward-facing lights. Meanwhile, Marlowe makes great use of walnut timber and polished chrome to further drive home the meeting of old and new. These materials are complemented by a colour scheme of sky blue, cream and crimson.
Seating spans both levels, blending cosy nooks with roomier group tables, while four enclosed sunrooms have been transformed into covetable hideaways for two. A terrace with its own bar overlooks Fish Lane, which the team hopes to utilise for impromptu drinks and off-the-street walk-ins.
Though accented with modern touches, Marlowe is couched in a sense of time and place. While undoubtedly a restaurant, Marlowe doesn’t shy away from its past as a collection of residences. In fact, the venue’s service style evokes the comfort of dinners at a friend’s house, or a generous Sunday lunch with the family.
“We wanted it to feel like a slightly elevated dining experience in someone’s home – to get a sense of being in rooms that used to be living areas and bedrooms,” says David. “We really wanted it to feel like a homely, welcoming, warm and generous experience.”
In the kitchen, Ollie – a British-born chef and restaurateur whose resume includes postings at Gauge, Stokehouse Q and several Michelin-starred restaurants in the UK – is examining Australian cuisine through a nostalgia-coated lens, crafting a menu of comforting home-style dishes that wouldn’t seem out of place at dinner with your grandparents.
“I think the key thing that shapes this menu is obviously the brand,” says Ollie, who used vintage Australian cookbooks as a source of inspiration. “We’re an Australian bistro, so we really wanted to give a nod to the early kind of 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s – the food they were eating at that time – and then just give it kind of like a little bit of a modern bump.”
Ollie’s menu is highly driven by produce, with the chef spending months cultivating a network of partner suppliers and farmers in order to amass a larder of top-tier ingredients. On the menu you’ll spot heritage free-range chickens from Joyce’s Gold in the Scenic Rim, Pureblood Wagyu from Sir Harry Chauval Wagyu in the Southern Downs and yabbies from Cherax Park Aquaculture near Gympie, among many others.
“I want Marlowe to really have a sense of place and purpose, and to showcase Brisbane where possible, Queensland definitely and Australia as a whole,” says Ollie. “When I was thinking of a dish, I started with the supplier I was going to use and then worked around that.”
Marlowe’s menu starts with oysters, crudo and carpaccio, before quickly segueing to snacks like cheddar scones with chicken pate, curried-crab brioche with pickled apple, and potato hash crowned with whipped smoked-trout brandade and green-pea mayo.
Skipping the bread is discouraged, with a cheesy garlic bread made with Lune croissant pastry a must-try appetiser. From there, starters such as truffled-mushroom cannelloni with sweetcorn veloute, and the signature duck pie with jus and radicchio jam prime the pump for the main event.
Headline dishes include a coral trout Wellington with chive butter sauce and caviar, spiced pork chop with caramelised apple, celeriac schnitzel with cafe de Paris butter and the Marlowe Mixed Grill – a whopping platter piled with wagyu sirloin, lamb cutlets, beef-tongue skewer and pork Cumberland sausage.
“They’re like the dishes that we grew up eating, but we’re giving them a little bit of love and a bit of a glow up, making it something that’s elevated but still has that warm, nostalgic pull,” says David of the restaurant’s debut menu.
Marlowe’s beverage program is similarly highly considered, with a cocktail list that highlights native ingredients and familiar flavours, but surprises with unconventional twists. Take the Marlowe Martini, for example, which blends a silky Tasmanian gin with macadamia-infused Oloroso. Or opt for the lemon myrtle and eucalyptus highball, which is lifted by the venue’s own house-made mandarin creaming soda.
On the wine front, Fanda Group beverage director Peter Marchant has assembled a 200-reference list that pays tribute to the artistry and evolution of Australian winemaking. A considerable portion of the list is composed of back-release wines and museum stock going back into the late 80s, 90s and 2000s.
Guests will be able to sample a number of verticals from some iconic producers like Henschke, Grosset, Mount Mary and Shaw + Smith, exploring different vintages from the same block. A tight list of French champagnes also features, while a 35-strong by-the-glass offering is bolstered by extensive use of Coravin.
“A big thing for me is trying to show people wines that they may not be looking at normally,” says Peter. “What I mean by that is that there’s a lot of great Australian wine that often gets overlooked – maybe because it’s not in a cool package, but the quality of wine is quite remarkable.
“It’s not necessarily just about the cool kids and it’s not about just the old traditional blue collar labels – it’s kind of a mix of both and trying to show off where the Australian wine is at right now.”
All told, Marlowe is a gentle reminder of what truly resonates – warmth, character and a sense of place. Equal parts memory and innovation, Marlowe invites diners not just to eat, but to reminisce. Marlowe’s polished evocations of home-cooked meals feel both fresh and familiar, reminding us why the classics became classics in the first place.
Marlowe is now open to the public – head to The Directory for operating hours, menu details and booking info.