With so many restaurants to choose from and usually being the guy that makes the choices, it was unusual for me to hand over the decision to others to choose a spot for dinner. I'm not sure if I'd have picked the Meat and Wine Co as an early choice when visiting Melbourne, but it was the last day of a conference I'd been attending and the Meat and Wine Co is where we'd been booked.
I'd not heard of the Meat and Wine Co but quickly got up to speed. Established in 2000, the Meat and Wine Co was created to create a family friendly steakhouse dining experience. With a number of outlets around the cooler suburbs around Sydney and Melbourne, the Meat and Wine Co has adopted an African meets Australian theme inside the restaurant.
We were booked into the Southbank outlet of the M&WC, which was just across the street from the Crown complex. Our reservation was for 6pm sharp, with express instructions that we had to be out for the second sitting of the night at 8pm. I was really surprised by this, given it was a Thursday, it was impressive that they could maintain a double sitting on a week night. I was even more impressed when we finally hit the restaurant and saw how big the dining area was, over several floors.
It was pretty easy to see where the wine section came from in the name, with an extraordinary array of wines on display as we made our way upstairs to our table. Walking up the stairs, there was a three story high stack of crates, filled with bottles of wine of all descriptions. Of course, not being a connoisseur of wine, they could have all been ordinary, but visually, the stack was spectacular. I was keen to see if the meat side of the name would be as impressive.
