It’s not inaccurate to talk about Andrew McConnell’s folio of restaurants as an empire, but there’s something about that very commercial language that just doesn’t feel right. Because anyone who’s eaten at Supernormal or Cumulus Inc. or Ricky & Pinky or Meatsmith – yes, the list keeps growing – knows how lovingly he crafts entire dining experiences. Sure, you do have to pay at the end, but McConnell’s ability to bring together incredible food, slick-but-warm service and sophisticated interior fitouts is antipodean to the kind of “rack ‘em up, roll ’em out” ruthlessness that the word “empire” implies.
At the centre of this – no, not empire, universe? – is McConnell’s flagship fine-diner, Cutler & Co., established in an old metalworks building on Gertrude Street in early 2009, when that part of Fitzroy was still a gritty urban dead zone. The original fitout, by architect Pascale Gomes-McNabb, was a seductive composition of banquette seating, bentwood chairs and fabric-wrapped lights that hung from the ceiling like dark clouds, and it transformed a cold industrial building shell into a warm inner-city sanctuary. But eight years is a long time – in hospitality, in interior design, in somehow-still-gentrifying Fitzroy. So when architect Iva Foschia of IF Architecture had completed the fitout for McConnell’s new wine bar, Marion, also on Gertrude Street, her practice was engaged to reimagine Cutler & Co.
