Strato - Yarra Hotel Group

CONCEPT, BRANDING, INTERIORS, SIGNAGE & WAY-FINDING & WEBSITE

A superlative dining experience.

Yarra Hotels Group has earned a world-class reputation for crafting beautifully designed and built luxury hotel and service apartments in highly sought-after locations across Australia’s capital cities. They collaborate with the best industry experts to create urban landmarks of distinction that are second to none.

Sitting proudly atop the new Oakwood Premier Hotel in Southbank and offering breathtaking panoramic views, Sky Bar and Strato are set to become Melbourne’s next must-visit 5-star dining destinations. Located at the top of a 40-storey tower, the $150M property boasts unparalleled 360-degree views across Port Phillip Bay, the CBD and Yarra River and the Macedon Ranges.

The Brief

Yarra Hotel Group approached BrandWorks to develop a full end-to-end strategy and F&B concept to support their new premium venue. From our very first site visit it was clear that Strato would offer some of the best day and night views of Melbourne, and had the potential to be something truly special.

Challenges

From the outset, it was clear to us that, rather than the entire venue leaning on one brand, the space would be better served by two distinct but related brands for the bar and restaurant. This would allow each to develop their own personality, style and offering.

Our Approach

We took inspiration from the hotel’s unique location - perched up in the clouds above Melbourne. The proposed concept references the elements of the earth’s atmosphere expressed through the air, water, ice, vapour and smoke. These elements are called upon throughout the brand, interior design, and menu concept to create a multi-sensory experience for the customer.

To distinguish the two brands, we looked at the duality of these elements and the interaction between night and day, light and dark, calm and stormy. The two resulting brands sit in a delicate balance, complementing and contrasting one another.

For the restaurant, the bright sunny day transformed into a black, stormy night. Still anchored by a premium gold brandmark to connect with Sky Bar, the rest of the palette features blacks and dark inky blues, with striking flashes of burnt orange. This palette aims to enhance and amplify the other senses in the restaurant, in particular taste and smell. The same premium details from Sky Bar are also carried through the brand, albeit with a focus on the heavier elements of smoke and ice.

A name was chosen for the restaurant, befitting the stormy theme: Strato.

Dining concept

Elevate your senses.

Strato is the resident five-star restaurant built with the intention of taking guests on a journey through its conceptual menu based on five elements; the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (Earth’s upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things). Here you can expect a little theatre in the presentation of their seasonal dishes and heavenly drinks menu, including grain-fed beef tartare with stubble quail egg yolk and native herbs, and a lychee Martini with a rosewater mist.

Led by Executive Chef, Gagan Sharma and his team, through his use of creative cooking techniques, the ordinary will be transformed into the extraordinary. Expect a bit of theatre with your meal, such as smoke, vapour, embers, levitation and nitrogen. The seasonal menu will change four times a year, and include dishes like grain-fed beef tartare, crispy skin baby barramundi, salt and pepper macaroon with scampi caviar and venison black pudding croquettes.

To complement the food, Charlie Ainsbury and his team from Proof and Co. have created a drinks menu that will blur the lines between old and new world luxury. Think classics like Negroni, and refreshing spins, like Lychee Martini finished with rosewater mist. On top of the cocktails, Strato and the rest of Sky Bar Melbourne will feature a wide range of beers, wines and rare spirits.

Interiors

With an existing design already proposed, BrandWorks were engaged to overlay the food and beverage concept in all aspects. With the interiors, this meant reimagining the dining layout and expressing the brand through palette, finishes and styling.

“Taking the concept strategy and reimagining it for the spatial experience, the joinery and furniture scheme for Strato and Sky Bar expresses the varied palette of changes in our atmosphere"

Strato was born from the concept of a perfect storm. With bold rolling clouds and flashes of lightning, the restaurant adopted a moodier palette than its sister venue - Sky Bar. This was expressed through the use of rich burnt orange velvet upholstery, brass edge detailing and charred timber surfaces. All joinery silhouettes are luxurious and heavily upholstered, to mimic bold cumulonimbus formations seen in a tumultuous night sky.

Outcomes

Officially opened in June 2022, the highly anticipated launch of Sky Bar and Strato has been well received and attracted strong positive reviews as one of Melbourne’s must-visit destinations of the year. Urban List’s rates the experience as ..“Melburnian's rooftop bar obsession (has been) taken to new heights” and Broadsheet calls to “Shoot for the Sky at Melbourne’s Ritzy New CBD Bar”.

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Photography: Pete Dillon

See Sky bar Case Study