One of Melbourne’s great boujee shops also happens to be a thrilling steak restaurant
Victor Churchill
Discipline, it’s said, is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. The goal today was to purchase a steak and keep it safe till the Sunday barbecue. Instead, I’ve sat down at a marble bar to drink Krug and watch a shit-hot chef perform the Maillard miracle on my sirloin. My bridge is in flames. Worse still, I haven’t even made it out of the butcher’s.
Victor Churchill is Australia’s finest butcher. This year, its original store celebrates its 150th anniversary in Sydney’s east. Anthony Bourdain called it the most beautiful butcher shop in the world. I can only imagine how he would have enjoyed the Melbourne sequel, a heritage-listed former bank fitted with a 14-seat horseshoe bar and an open kitchen.
Brass accents, Himalayan salt bricks, Italian marble floors – Victor Churchill Melbourne could have lived a happy life as a luxury boutique on Collins Street. Instead, it’s a prestige butcher and date-night destination for the High Street set, who are seasoning their Visas for a flame-grilling of their own.
Chef Monty Koludrovic joined the team earlier in the year, after a six-year stint in Los Angeles with the Australian-owned Botanical Hospitality Group. A huge get for owner-butchers Victor and Anthony Puharich, he’ll parachute into Victor Churchill’s new venture, a third-level steakhouse at Crown Melbourne, in 2027. Until then, he’ll be here, marshalling nine-plus cuts of aspirational beef alongside chef Lucas del Peloso.
The best steakhouses don’t baulk at the trends of yore, so if you’re fond of a little ’80s power-cooking, a plate of scallops Rockefeller is the only place to begin. At three for $39, they help contextualise the three-figure reality of the steaks to come, baking the bygone decadence of chopped spinach, parmigiano and pangrattato over scallops of textbook cuisson.
Tuna carpaccio is punched thin enough to cover the plate but thick enough to give your jaw something to do before showtime. Plated simply with olives and chives and balanced with yuzu, it’s easy, familiar elegance in red.
You could spend the whole evening chatting cuts and fat content with the staff – they’re properly knowledgeable and eminently patient. The same can be said for sommelier Samuel Baxter, who makes light work of a confronting list.
Ultimately, your biggest decisions come down to producer, marbling and cut. Tonight’s control is a 350-gram Lockyer Valley sirloin ($110). Our variable, a 220-gram full-blood wagyu zabuton – chuck tail flap – from Cobungra Station ($105). Both are studies in precision.
The crust on the sirloin is stout and perfectly seasoned, the flesh mellow and yielding. There is, however, nothing mellow about zabuton. Sliced thick from a muscle that does very little, its fat content rivals the enormous bowl of Paris mash served alongside. It is sheer indulgence, and not for the faint of heart.
Nobody makes it out of this shop with both steak and wallet intact. But when it’s this well-executed, what are you meant to do? Shopping at Victor Churchill is one of the great retail experiences of Melbourne, but dining in is a singular thrill.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Big-ticket steaks in a luxury butcher.
Go-to dishes: 350g Lockyer Valley Black Onyx 230-day grain-fed MS 5+ sirloin ($110); scallops Rockefeller ($39 for 3); Paris mash ($17); pavlova ($22)
Drinks: Blowout bottles and bedrock cocktails mixed with equal parts care and flair.
Cost: About $340 for two, excluding drinks.
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