To eat and do good? A $15 two course lunch at Fifteen Melbourne was too good to pass up.
For those who don’t know, Fifteen is a worldwide social enterprise business started by famous uber-energetic chef Jamie Oliver. Its aim is to provide apprenticeship scheme for young people, between the ages of 18 and 24, to enable them to learn all aspects of the day-to-day running of the restaurants, and all profits go back to the apprenticeship scheme. The Melbourne branch is headed by executive chef Tobie Puttock who oversees 20 apprentices each year.
Fifteen Melbourne can be found in a laneway and down a basement, which opens out into a sleek and colourful interior with an elegant dining room presided by dangling terrariums and a lovely marble bar near the entrance. The $15 lunch special is only offered at the bar, as the dining room serves a more expensive $35 option where you get two courses and a glass of wine.
First course was a broccoli and potato soup. It was remarkably bad.
Now I understand that to produce a two course lunch for $15 it is more than likely that older produce or cheap cuts of meat will be used. But not only was this soup stringy, but the woody stems of the broccoli were so old that they couldn’t even be blended – leaving you with soup with inedible little twigs in every mouthful.
To add insult to injury, the soup was oversalted. The poor seasoning and unpalatable texture really made me wonder whether anyone had tasted the soup before they served it out to members of the public.
To their credit, after we told them about the stringy soup, they immediately withdrew it from the menu.
The second course was a pasta dish – oriechette with veal sauce for the carnivores and gnocchi with spicy capsicum sauce for the vegetarians and non-veal eaters (moi). Each of the serves were tiny – would you consider these even an entrée size? While the sauce was quite nice, the dish was ruined by the mushy and overcooked gnocchi.
Overall, while I applaud the sentiment of providing a good-value set lunch and of course in the charitable works of Fifteen, on the basis of my lunch I really couldn’t recommend the restaurant. The amateur mistakes meant that the food wasn’t up to the standard I would have expected for such a well-known, well-heeled establishment. While the damage to my wallet was minimal and I could pat myself on the back knowing that the profits were going back to the foundation, my experience really didn’t inspire me to pay double the price to try the main lunch menu or to come back from dinner.
Sorry, but Fifteen Melbourne you failed for me.
For another social enterprise businesses in Melbourne (that serve great food), try restaurant Charcoal Lane and fashion studio/cafe The Social Studio.
- Fifteen Melbourne, Basement, 115-117 Collins Street (enter through George Parade), Melbourne +61 3 9639 7586
that’s a real shame. i was wondering if the Melbourne restaurant would be any good. i’ve been to the London one and was too impressed although the size of the dishes in London were huge and it was a real struggle to finish the 4 courses offered. they were portioned like mains and it was very expensive as well.
Simon Food Favourites´s last blog ..Where should I eat in Melbourne: Visiting 24–30 April 2010 (10 Mar 2010)
Twitter: simonleong
| March 11, 2010, 8:58 am
Hi Simon
Welcome to the blog! I’ve never been to the London (or other) Fifteen restaurants so I can’t comment on how the Melbourne version compares. But on its own merits, it really was a poor meal and frankly you can get some really great sit-down lunch in Melbourne CBD for $15 or less – Sushi Ten, Don Don, Coco Rice, FYG Gallery. Old Town Kopitiam to name a few.
Jetsetting Joyce
I saw you talking about the lunch and was waiting for your post because $15 for a 2 course lunch at a higher end restaurant sounds almost too good to be true… and it seems like it was! I understand the need to still make profit from a $15 lunch, but if the food can’t be good for the price, why spoil your reputation?
Rilsta @ My Food Trail´s last blog ..The Cookbook Challenge: Week 15 Muffins theme round up
Twitter: myfoodtrail
| March 11, 2010, 10:09 am
Hi Rilsta
This is exactly the conundrum I came away with. Presumably the $15 lunch is a way to entice diners to come back again and try the more expensive lunch menu or dinner menu. So surely you’d do your best and not cut corners, even if you have to use cheaper cuts/vegetables only/serve more ‘rustic’ style food. Definitely a case of two wrongs do not make a right.
Jetsetting Joyce
Interesting. I went to fifteen when it was fairly newly opened (but not so new that I had to battle a queue to get in – yes its true, people queued outside!). I had a pretty average lunch there, though mostly my issue was with the service which was painfully slow. It took over an hour for my single course to arrive, and this was after we had specifically mentioned that we wanted a quick lunch and asked what would be the fastest to prepare. I ended up inhaling my roast pork in about 5-10 minutes as I needed to get to a meeting. I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling ill for eating so quickly.
I can be a harsh critic so I have never been back. After your review, I don’t think I’ll be changing my stance!!
Emily´s last blog ..Combining for protein: tofu + buckwheat noodles
Twitter: em_itpleasesus
| March 11, 2010, 10:16 am
Hi Emily
Just goes to show how one bad meal can affect your opinion of a place. Even though Mr Calombris argued that food bloggers don’t provide accurate reviews because we only visit a restaurant once, surely this is a case which highlights that food bloggers have their place because we’re regular punters. And regular punters aren’t going to spend their time and hard-earned money returning to a restaurant that has dished out a bad meal once already. I’m with you Emily, I ain’t going back.
Jetsetting Joyce
I’m yet to blog about this outing, and I’m not really sure I need to now, because my sentiments would echo this post almost exactly. I have had friends who have been for dinner, and said they had an exceptionally good dining experience, but like Joyce, I’m not inspired to go back to see if that $15 lunch was just an aberration.
*such, such woody soup*
*such, such small serves of pasta*
On the positive side, it WAS good orichiette, and the service was good.
Billy´s last blog ..Donnini’s
Twitter: cloudcontrol
| March 11, 2010, 10:17 am
Hi Billy
True – service was friendly and they were accommodating with providing the vegetarian dishes. But the service wasn’t enough to make up for the sub-standard food. It made me wonder whether Jamie Oliver has actually eaten there? Seems weird that people say the London restaurant is so excellent yet the Melbourne incarnation is so poor. I also note that Tobie Puttock was in the kitchen at lunch (though not cooking) – presumably he is responsible for overseeing the staff and the training and checking the food as it goes out? Strange because there is no way any self-respecting chef would serve up salty, stringy soup.
Jetsetting Joyce
my review from a few years ago:
Fifteen, jesus where oh where do I start?
Situated in the ‘paris end’ of Collins st, we enter down the stairs to be confronted with the stench of sewerage, ‘plumbing backed up?’ I asked the maitre d. She basically denied that there was a smell, and anything I was smelling was because they were in a basement and there had been construction happening along the laneway all week. We wait at the bar to get a table, have a cocktail. The cocktail list was boring, unimaginative and tastless. The 2 cocktails I had were disappointing to downright bad. We all decided to go for the 4 course degustation menu. Our waiter was like a pimply, blonde, teenage Australian version of Faulty Towers, who had to keep coming back to the table to profusely apologise because he had got it wrong yet again and our first course was so and so. He came back 3 times. Once our courses started coming out we only ever saw him when he would zip past to ask whether the current course was fine other than that we never saw him again.
The food, first course tasmanian ocean trout with a fried quail egg on top. It was delicious but nothing too special. Second course for me (I had the vego degust after that) was a pan fried homemade gnocci with talleggio, which was quite simply exquisite, this was the best course I had there and quite frankly what I expected from every course. My main meal was roasted pumpkin, wilted spinach, a poached egg on a bed of polenta, which was plain average. I could have gotten a better main from the Vegie bar for a 1/5 of the price. The dessert was a sliver of lemon tart, although lovely, nothing too exciting. We had 2 pallette cleansers, me, one of roasted beetroot with sweetened soft cheese (I cant remember whether it was a ricotta or not) which was served before the courses started, and was quite tasty, and a homemade apple gelato cleanser before dessert (which was lovely).
For the money we paid I expect excellence. Being the charity training side of it, I expected a little bit less quality in the food, particularily in presentation, however front of house staff *should* have been immaculate. I expect to have a dining experience fuelled by little genies, that I dont even notice when my plates are cleared or the water is topped up. I had to ASK for water and had to hunt down a waiter to order a coffee before the dessert arrived after waiting for 5 minutes to try and flag someone walking by. Also the timing between courses was too rushed, we could have done with at least 5 minutes extra between courses, I had to ask to wait for dessert until we were ready. Basically, for that kind of money I do not want to have to ask for ANYTHING, I want the experience to border on religious.
Now coming from a city world reknowned for its produce and food, its a stiffly competitive environment to be running any kind of cafe or restaurant in. Fifteen really needed to pull up its socks on this one and it failed dismally. I could get better service at pretty much ALL of the establishments I frequent and food on par with 3 of the 4 courses at a tonne of restaurants around Melbourne for at least half the price. I went there partly out of altruism but also because I had been to Fifteen in London and it was exquisite. It was the dining experience I was looking for above and if not more. The irony is, is that we had Australian waiters when we went there as well haha! This is probably where the problem lies, all the superb wait staff are working at other establishements, and it really adds not much to your credentials working at Fifteen, when you have so many more options around town to make a name for yourself.
It pains me to say but avoid Fifteen, I actually agree with this review from the age. For the same quality modern italian food and better service try Il Baccaro and its sister restaurant (jee I cant remember what its called, its around the corner right next door to Gin Palace) or wanky but EXCELLENT gnocci and cocktails at Hairy Canary (I had to go there 3 times in one fortnight because I literally kept dreaming about their gnocci), Tutte Bene or Scusami at Southbank.
Gepettos in East Melbourne has to be my favourite Italian restaurant in Melbourne. Small, unassuming, still family owned and run, it is the stuff that dreams are made of. Regularily serving every kind of meat under the rainbow, its rustic italian home style cooking in such an environment. I’ve read reviews where they’ve dissed how long things have taken, but this is the italian way of eating, a meal takes 3 hours. Thoughts or comments? Fav italian food in Melbourne? We are so spoiled for choice here its ridiculous.
Carla´s last blog ..Monday Melbourne Roundup (Wednesday edition)
Hi Carla
Thanks for posting your review – it seems that things haven’t improved too much at Fifteen since you were there. I also went to Fifteen when it first opened (I’m a sucker for a bit of hype sometimes) and don’t recall being blown away by the food.
And you’re absolutely right – there are MANY excellent restaurants, Italian or otherwise, in its vicinity which are comparable in price or cheaper. I really don’t know how it can continue to be in business if it can’t get the food bit right, let alone the service.
Jetsetting Joyce
Carla is your review current or about years ago??
to me it does not seem current that menu is pretty old maybe you should talk about what are they doing now not the past no point in waiting years in to blog about an experience thing may have changed.
You should try it now the new crew is doing amazing staff..
MD
Shame that this place isn’t doing so well food-wise :c I like the idea behind it for sure and whilst my friend has always suggested we try it out, I’ve always been hesitant due to mixed reviews I keep hearing about it. Looks like I was right, those pasta servings are just tiny!
Ashley´s last blog ..Saigon, Vietnam
Hi Ashley
Tiny is right! Ridiculously tiny. Even at $15 I felt a big ripped off. Especially when the gnocchi was so mushy! I was willing to overlook the stringy soup, but not the poor pasta as well.
Jetsetting Joyce
We went there last year and I was completely underwhelmed. Your right, so many amateur mistakes. Definitely wont be going back. Even though $15 sounds like too good to pass, I would still put my $15 towards something better.
Maria@TheGourmetChallenge´s last blog ..Bistro Vue
Hi Maria
It made me wonder whether the cafe at William Angliss TAFE, another training ground for hospitality and cooking students, would be any better than Fifteen. I might give it a go just as a comparison.
Jetsetting Joyce
Shame, shame, shame! I’ve actually always wondered about the $15 at Fifteen but never got around to trying it out. Guess I won’t bother now, a Vue lunch box will probably do the trick!
Hi Vee
When I was thinking about better lunches for $15 I forgot about Cafe Vue – thanks for reminding me! An infinitely better experience.
Jetsetting Joyce
Firstly let me say that your comments above seem a little harsh. I have been lucky enough to have dined a Fifteen London Fifteen Cornwall. Last week I dined at Fifteen Melbourne and found the experience if not equal to both the UK Fifteen’s but must say slightly better. I had heard that a new Head Chef had been appointed and has implemented an amazing new menu…. this did not dissapoint. According to reports this young Aussie guy has returned home afer having worked at Fifteen in London and at Gordon Ramsay’s Maze in London. Don’t write it off yet. Give it a try I am sure you will be pleasantly surprised.
Twitter: rofon14
| March 12, 2010, 12:58 pm
Hi Xenophon
Thanks for your comment. I’m interested to hear that you found Fifteen Melbourne excellent last week – what did you order, how was the service and what did the bill total? Your experience seems to go against the grain of what others diners have said in response to my review, but that could just be because generally only people who agreed with me bothered to comment.
Jetsetting Joyce
We dined on the following:
Beetroot cured salmon with sour cream panna cotta and pickled cucumber salad
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Duck bresaola with black figs, wild rocket and truffle honey
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Potato and pecorino ravioli with lemon thyme, beurre noisette and crispy sage
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Risotto (vialone nano) with zucchini, zucchini flowers, king prawns and Shiso cress
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Grilled tuna with white eggplant caponata, celery hearts and Vin Santo marinated anchovies.
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Confit pork belly with cotechino sausage, celeriac remoulade, salsa verde and apple sauce
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Chocolate and salted caramel tart with hazelnut ice-cream (To die for)
The service was second to none. Wine to match each dish was reccommended by our waitress and we were glad we took this option up. It enhanced our dining experience.
The bill totalled $230 for the two of us.
Twitter: rofon14
| March 12, 2010, 3:30 pm
It was never on my hit list when I read all those not so good reviews.
But still they are doing a good thing.
Twitter: jeroxie
| March 12, 2010, 5:44 pm
Put it on your hit list Penny. I promise you will not be disappointed.
Twitter: rofon14
| March 14, 2010, 7:02 pm