Seamstress

Ph: 9663 6363; 113 Lonsdale St, MELBOURNE 3000 www.seamstress.com.au

Modern Asian, $$
Open Mon-Fri noon-3pm Mon-Sat 6-10.30pm bar Mon-Sat 6pm-1am; Licensed, BYO, Corkage $25 bottle; AE DC MC V EFT
Chef Raymond Larkins & Jerry Mai (5-12-08) Owner Jason Chan & Anthony Herzog (5-12-08)

Other published opinions

Courier Mail Food and Wine Guide 2009 Queensland "It's been a sweatshop and a brothel but now this grungy city warehouse is home to a trio of attractions"

Age Good Food Guide 2009 Score: 14/20 "It's oh so Melbourne. Minimal signage gives way to a special little dining room up a flight of rickety stairs; you have to go looking for Seamstress. In a cleverly recycled old red-brick, with an old-newborrowed-blue kind of decor, the name references rag-trade days while abundant Asian silks hint at the Chinatown location"

Gourmet Traveller 2009 Australian Restaurant Guide "Jerry Mai Seamstress is New York loft meets Chinese silk trader. This narrow old city building is now home to an intimate bar and a stimulating, winecentric first-floor dining room. A combination of new and recycled gives this Chinatown fringe-dweller a unique look and feel distressed yet precise - and references its rag-trading roots"

Herald Sun Simon Plant, 10-06-08 Score: **** "This restaurant produces modern Australian cooking in which Asian fundamentals are gainfully explored"

The Age Michael Harden Reviewer, 1-4-2008 "Melbourne is a fashion conscious town that loves to follow a trend. Observe all the well-fed squeezing into skinnyleg jeans best seen on emaciated teenagers and drug-addled rock stars and you soon realise that trend following is not always the wisest path to take"

The Age John Lethlean, 11-2-2008 Score: 14.5/20 "With its exploitation of the building's fabulous raw bones, quirky accessorising and clever furnishing using old and new in a rather seamless (no pun intended) display of good design, this is one of the coolest dining rooms to open in Melbourne in a long time. Of course, being a modern sort of business, there's a whole lot more to the place than its dining room. There's a second-floor cocktail bar; a ground-floor kitchen; and in the basement, soon, another bar. But, up a wonderful old staircase on the first floor, you will find Seamstress the restaurant, and when you've been exposed to one too many glittering, personality-free new "spaces" over the course of a year, starting a new one with a place that is more New York loft than Melbourne property developer's business opportunity is a pleasant surprise."

The Age Dani Valent, 29-1-2008 "They spent a year scouring the city for a site and just as they were getting demoralised by shyster rents found this four-storey higgledy-piggledy building on Lonsdale Street, complete with broken windows and a sagging ceiling propped up with old doors. "We walked in, looked at each other and said, 'This place has a great feeling'," says Herzog"

Herald Sun Eat, Bob Hart, 1-12-07 "There are four levels at 113 Lonsdale: a welcoming cocktail bar on the second floor, a fine restaurant on the first, a versatile kitchen on the ground and a second bar, with a music orientation, under construction in the basement. ... No sooner had we taken our seats in this stunning room with its colourfully draped ceiling, stripped walls and floor, auto-inspired banquettes and Tassie oak furniture designed by the owners, than the barometric pressure was noted. This is done, apparently, to ascertain the type of complimentary appetiser to be presented: in our case, it was a rich, ducky broth laced with shallots. I have no idea what this means in terms of weather, but it was delicious."

The Age Clem Bastow, 20-12-2007 "Seamstress may look schmick from the street - a glossy window, a darkened doorway - but its innards are anything but boutique, and it's all the more enjoyable for it. Housed in one of those wonderful old terraces that still stand around the Russell and Lonsdale street region in among the Peking duck cafes and sex-toy shops, its rickety wooden stairs will transport you to drinking heaven"