Rockpool Bar & Grill

Rockpool Bar & Grill sits in Southbank, and the room reads exactly the way the Melbourne dining establishment expects a steakhouse kitchen at this address to read — considered, particular, and exact about the things it cares about. Crown's deal-closing dinner — wagyu and a serious cellar.

The cooking turns on signatures the Melbourne regulars order without looking at the menu: Wagyu Cube Roll, Lobster Roll, and David's Pie. The kitchen runs at the $$$$ register, with a wine programme that is either deep where the room is loud and tight where the room is quiet, and a service floor that has clearly worked at this register before.

For a close a deal dinner in Melbourne, this is one of the addresses you should already know about. Reservations skew hard; dress is cocktail. The averaged Food/Ambience/Value line sits at 9.0/10 — high enough to mean the room is doing more right than wrong, calibrated against the sharpest other tables in the city.

Crown's deal-closing dinner — wagyu and a serious cellar. For a deeper read on this occasion across other cities, the Close a Deal guide is the canonical reference.