Bellevue Opens On The Riverwalk With Martini Mondays, Live Sports And An Edible Pina Colada

Bellevue Bar & Terrace is more than a pub to Executive Chef Gary Lai. The new spot from Australian Venue Co casts a golden hour glamour on its patch of the Crown Riverwalk, a nostalgic thread running through the Modern Australian cuisine, sun-soaked terrace and vintage-accented fitout you’ve come to expect from the fresh wave of Melbourne pubs. Lai started his Melbourne career at Crown, and Bellevue is personal.

“Coming back here, it feels like coming home,” he says. 

Lai always loved the humble art of bringing friends and family together with food, but his career began in Michelin-starred fine-dining, from Amber in Hong Kong to Pierre in Osaka. The Atlantic at Crown was his first job when he arrived in 2016, working his way up from Chef de Partie to Head Chef. After a time at Saint in St Kilda and the Espy, the offer to return to Crown had an emotional tug.

“I said, ‘oh my god, I just want to be part of this’,” he says. “It’s like bringing up another child.”

Bellevue already feels familiar, an old-world fitout with classic pub cues. Walls with semi-French moulding in gumleaf green and exposed brick hug a room filled edge-to-edge with upholstered booths, high-tops and a long, curved bar. Prints of sporting and botanical illustrations look down between fabric lampshades and big screen TVs. The space is large, but soft edges, warm timber joinery and subtle brown-checked fabrics give a welcoming air. Sure, it’s a swish marble-look bartop, but there’s footy on TV and a beer in your hand. 

Instead of a beer garden, Bellevue’s sprawling Euro-style terrace holds 160 guests, slipping into banquettes along the greener-lined walls or seated at high-tops for Yarra River views. 

Lai’s menu is a blend of both: Euro wine bar meets relaxed pub. 

“It's not a fine dining restaurant,” he says. “There's a little bit of everything for everyone.”

The terrace calls for chorizo and manchego croquettes with Yarra Valley salmon roe, chives, and smoky paprika aioli, or the summery notes of oozy burrata with orange jam, blood orange and pickled fennel. House-made focaccia, golden-crisped in Mount Zero olive oil, comes with Vegemite butter for Aussie umami. 

Pub mains hit all the right notes, from burgers to seafood spaghetti, with echoes of Lai’s culinary past. Smoky, spicy, chargrilled harissa chicken is inspired by his time at Rumi. There’s a twist to the schnitzel: a parsley-oregano herbed crust he picked up from Puttanesca in Kew, with a coat of parmesan and a four-pepper red wine jus with real kick. 

Steak is Lai’s go-to pub order, so he lets beef shine with grass-fed steak cuts and the deliberate restraint in marbling for his grilled Black Opal wagyu skewers.

“We don’t want it too fatty,” he says. “There’s a good balance between beefiness and richness.”

These grilled bites give burger notes, swiped through cream cheese, onion and chive dip, topped with herbs, charred pickled onions and crispy shallots.

From Espy experience, Lai knows the importance of a pub’s hero dish.

“A parma is one of the ways you can test how good a pub is,” he says. “It's such a simple thing, but it's so easy to mess up.”

The Bellevue parma has the schnitzel herbed crust, but Lai’s technique is in the perfect cheese-ham-sauce ratio. The less you do to a parma, the better. A pub is also defined by its chips, and Lai’s skin-on fries have a zippy housemade lemon pepper seasoning with salt and vinegar powder.

But there’s more than meat and chips.

“A lot of pubs don’t look at vegetarian as seriously,” Lai says. “It's all about flavour.”

His veg is vibrant, like pan-fried gnocchi on a bed of roast pumpkin puree with whipped ricotta, pepitas and a bright mess of soft, fresh herbs.

Sticky date pudding is having a real moment in Melbourne, and Lai swears by his ridiculously moist serve with clotted cream and caramel sauce. The dessert star might be the pina colada-inspired rum-roasted pineapple: whole, scoopable wedges in a warm custard of coconut cream, lime and rummy syrup, with coconut sorbet and coconut crumble. Bonus: it’s vegan.

“Even as a non-drinker, I love that dish,” Lai says. “It’s got a balance of the richness, sweetness and the kick from the rum.”

In an economic pinch, Melburnians still want to dine out. Lai sees the surge in pub popularity as proof that people want somewhere they can come back to again and again. 

“One of the most important things we can do is consistency,” she says. “We don't have that fancy caviar and truffle. You just want things simple, straightforward, and done right.”

If people are moving away from luxury degustations, they’re drifting to long lunches. Bellevue is bringing back the art of the lingering midday meal, with three-course daily long lunches ideal for terrace afternoons—or an undisturbed sitting in the private dining room. 

There’s even a classy twist on pub specials. Martini Mondays offer a flight of three mini martinis matched with special snacks like oysters with margarita mignonette, kingfish crudo cracker and rare beef blinis.

Venue Manager Brit Rumma’s generous but targeted wine list caters to the tastes of Southbank, which often lean into pinot grigio and Champagne.

“People just love crisp white wine and sitting along the river and watching people,” she says.

While the 12-tap pub is obviously set up for pints, Rumma wants to focus on the drinking culture of the terrace, with mini menus of spritzes and margaritas.

“We have such a beautiful view of the Yarra and the city,” she says. “We get all those golden hour moments.”

Vinyl DJs spin on the terrace from Thursday to Sunday, and Sunday Spritz Sessions take over every second weekend, with live gigs and a very interesting deal: order two spritzes between 3pm and 7pm, and a sketch artist draws your portrait on a Bellevue postcard as a keepsake. Live sports from cricket to F1 run across every screen in the venue, with sound up for the big games and special events. This city pub aims to be everyone’s local. 

The sketch artist also makes an appearance on 3 November this year for a special long lunch party that runs into a night of DJs and drinks, with a public holiday eve Martini Monday on the cards. Christmas isn’t far off, either, and Bellevue is already looking ahead to festive season events.

Image credit: Chege Mbuthi