‘An uncanny-valley aura’: Chapel Street’s glitzy new late-night spot feels like a fantasy

Borrowing a name and at least part of a shtick wholeheartedly from another restaurant is an odd choice at the best of times, but it’s especially strange when the muse in question is a venue as controversial as New York City’s Frog Club, which made its debut in February 2024 and closed 10 months later. That iteration of Frog Club was headed up by chef Liz Johnson, who was fresh from one of the restaurant world’s most infamous implosions at Los Angeles’ Horses, the details of which are so tawdry I don’t even like to think about them, let alone write about them.

And now Melbourne has its very own Frog Club, at the Windsor end of Chapel Street, and while it isn’t aiming for quite the level of camp in which the original was steeped, it certainly borrows the ethos of “new nostalgia” that Johnson purported to be her driving force in New York.

The space is like a fantasy of what might happen if an old New York steakhouse was mated with a Paris brasserie, and their progeny went through some kind of reality show filter that lifted all the patina from its cute baby face and delivered it fresh and ripe for our Melbourne needs. The puce leather banquettes are extra padded, offering geometric buffers between tables to give extra privacy.

The walls of the main dining room are lined with murals by Tasmanian artist Jamie Edward, blurry, colourful and chic. The service staff is mainly young, mainly green, but extremely well-trained, delivering service that pantomimes fine dining in a way that’s almost satirical, but not quite. These kids are throwing martinis (literally; the martini is “thrown” back and froth between two mixing tins to excellent effect, both visual and textural) and mixing salads tableside like absolute champions.

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There is caviar service, and a $280 seafood platter that offers sashimi, oysters, cooked prawns and bugs, scallops, and raw clams or pipis. The self-proclaimed “signature” caviar tart is a bite of something silky and lightly salty that turns out to be Jerusalem artichoke, with a little quenelle of caviar on top that is basically imperceptible.

I did get my briny oceanic fix with the oysters Rockefeller, which were obviously made with high quality fresh oysters, and had a lighter spinach, parmesan and breadcrumb topping than is often the case – they needed the lemon on the side to bring out their flavour, but that’s why it’s there.

A chicken liver parfait looked exactly right, but wasn’t quite rich or creamy enough, too stiff, not luscious. The same could be said for a crab gratin, which came apart in discrete spoonfuls, without any ooze or glop that you might expect. Both dishes gave me a strange sense that there was something at play that dampened the luxury of the food, an undefinable component that made them taste less, not more.

On the other hand, I’m fairly certain there is some manner of flavour enhancement used in the seasoning for the steaks, which range from a 280-gram hanger for $48, to a $380 one-kilogram wagyu cote de boeuf. That’s not really a complaint – I keep MSG in my own kitchen and will occasionally season steak with it, but it did add to the overall feeling of unrealness about the restaurant and its food.

Did I have fun at Frog Club? Absolutely. I liked building my own sundae for dessert. I liked the extensive wine list and finding exciting bargains among the big-spend Champagnes and Chablis. I like that it’s open late, seven days a week – there’s not nearly enough of that in full service restaurants in this town. If I’d not been paying close attention, I might not have noticed the peculiarities of the food – they’re incredibly subtle, and at a surface-level, everything I ate there was pleasant.

Do you remember the first extremely cute AI video you saw? Perhaps it gave you a funny feeling right away, but probably not. Frog Club has that same kind of vibe about it, an uncanny-valley aura that persists through the whole experience, from the fantasy of the room to the theatrics of the service to the odd, plumped-up quality of the food. You could take this completely at face value, and have a pretty damn good time doing it. Not every experience needs to be brimming with authenticity to be pleasurable.

Hospitality is thought of as one of the industries most immune from the coming AI economic implosion, being mostly built on physical labour and human interaction but, of course, our cafes and bars and restaurants are going to be impacted. We’re already seeing AI slop take over restaurant signage and marketing, and people are certainly already using it to write menus and make business plans and do all kinds of other things. While Frog Club might be wholly AI-free (and I’m not implying otherwise), technology influences culture directly or indirectly, and in some ways I will think of this as the first restaurant wholly of the AI-era: a wonky facsimile of something else; vaguely eerily familiar; fun but, in many ways, empty.

The low-down

Atmosphere: Clubby, nostalgic, glam.

Go-to dishes: Oysters Rockefeller ($8 each); build-your-own sundae (ice-cream $6 a scoop; sauces and toppings $4 each).

Drinks: Great cocktails, extensive global wine list with a thing for France.

Cost: About $250 for two before drinks.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.