The StandardX Melbourne Hotel Review

It’s the first of its kind in the world, so naturally, this Fitzroy hotel is setting its own standards.

Back in 1999, hotelier André Balazs opened the first Standard Hotel on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip . With its live models in the lobby’s glass vitrine, a DJ booth at the front desk and affordable prices, it soon became the place to stay and party, even for the celebrity set. Standard Hotels opened all over the world – the New York iteration straddling the High Line was briefly famous thanks to exhibitionists displaying their wares through the full-length windows to the strolling crowds below – but it’s taken 25 years for the brand to reach Australian shores.

Well, kind of. StandardX is the little sister of the original Standard. It’s not quite as brash, and nowhere near as party-hard. This far more subtle offshoot is perfectly suited to its locale in one of Melbourne’s coolest neighbourhoods and offers visitors an attractive alternative to the average CBD stay.

Here’s everything to know about the newly-opened The StandardX, Melbourne.

Location

It’s one of Melbourne’s favourite suburbs, for both locals and travellers. Fitzroy has a few famous streets – Gertrude and Smith, which it shares with Collingwood – but the StandardX is only a hundred metres from the best-known: Brunswick Street. In every direction, there are restaurants, bars, cafes, boutiques, galleries and just about everything else you could possibly want to visit.

Plus, on weekends, the Rose St Artist’s Market next door displays the original creations of local designers and makers. The tram into the city is only a couple of minutes’ walk away.

the exterior of The StandardX Melbourne — The StandardX is only a hundred metres from Brunswick Street.

Style and character

The eye-catching, rusted exterior, designed by Woods Bagot, looks as if it has been part of the neighbourhood for decades. That’s the overall vibe you get from this new-build hotel, even though, when I visit, it’s only been open for days. From the welcoming staff members at check-in to expanses of lush greenery, the StandardX Melbourne feels established.

Sarah Smalltown's macramé work at The StandardX Melbourne — The StandardX Melbourne features Sarah Smalltown’s macramé work. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

Imagine you gave your friend with impeccable taste a healthy budget to create a stylish yet modern space for people to hang out. That’s the feeling downstairs in the public spaces designed by Hecker Guthrie.

the interior at StandardX Melbourne — StandardX offers a stylish yet modern space to unwind. (Image: Rhiannon Taylor)

Custom and vintage furniture is used throughout the lobby, the adjoining Bang restaurant and in an almost hidden Loft area, complete with a fireplace. Throughout there are art books to peruse and peaceful corners where you can sit and work. Artist Sarah Smalltown’s mega macrame, used here to wrap cement pylons, adds texture and a hand-crafted element to the sleek finish.

the BANG restaurant at The StandardX Melbourne — The adjoining BANG restaurant feels sleek and classy. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

Facilities

There’s no gym or pool, although the hotel has an agreement with one of the local 24-hour facilities for those who want to work out. It’s also just a short walk to the Fitzroy Swimming Pool – on summer weekends, it’s quite the scene. Guests can also access the rooftop, with its Mexican casa fit-out and views of the city.

the rooftop restaurant at The StandardX Melbourne — Enjoy Mexican eats and drinks on the rooftop. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

Rooms

At first glance, you might not think the rooms are particularly special. Apart from the blue-and-white striped carpet, they’re understated, with white and cream tones dominating. Look closer, however, and the details shine. At the base of a terracotta-coloured locker that hides the mini bar is a rounded silver shape, designed to prevent kicked toes on a bare metal leg in the middle of the night.

the bedroom interior at The StandardX Melbourne — Each suite is laid out with blue-and-white striped carpet. (Image: Rhiannon Taylor)

There’s a tiny, fluoro artwork by Jane Sinclair and a foldaway ledge, where you can set up your laptop to work. Bathroom walls of fluted glass offer equal parts privacy and natural light. Within, there are full-size bottles of Davines products.

the living room interior at The StandardX Melbourne — You’ll find vintage furniture across the lobby. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

The hotel has 125 rooms in total, ranging from Cozy King to Suite Spot. My King View is on level six (of seven), and I spend some quality time watching the streets around me and admiring the view of the city skyline. And, praise be, the windows can be opened.

a look inside one of the bedrooms at The StandardX Melbourne — Rooms overlook the city skyline. (Image: Rhiannon Taylor)

Food and drink

It’s all about Thai street food influences at BANG on the ground floor. Chef Justin Dingle-Garciyya (formerly of Aman Resorts) is sending out dishes like blue swimmer crab pa tong ko donuts, roast pressed duck red curry and white boy noodles, a play on char kway teow with crab and lobster bisque. The punchy flavours are an excellent match to signature cocktails like the Going Incognito (vodka, lychee liqueur, lime) and Koh Ma Phrao (coconut milk, creamy chai, white rum, spiced rum, lime).

the roast duck leg curry at The StandardX Melbourne — Indulge in the roast duck leg curry.

At breakfast, guests can order mango sticky rice, turmeric and ginger porridge, coconut fried eggs and prawn siu mai, or a more traditionally Western take on the day’s first meal.

a waiter arranging the chairs at the BANG restaurant, The StandardX Melbourne — Amble down to the BANG restaurant on the ground floor. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

The Box, near check-in and open 24 hours, is essentially your mini bar. It’s stocked with local wine, beers and spirits, Hunted + Gathered chocolate made in Richmond, tubs of ice cream churned by the hotel’s pastry chef and other snacks, as well as books supplied by Bookshop by Uro and clothes made in collaboration with Saint Cloud.

the Box at StandardX Melbourne — Get all your essentials from The Box. (Image: Rhiannon Taylor)

As soon as summer rolls around, Mercado Medellin will open for guests only, serving Mexican eats and drinks on the rooftop.

a Thai dish at the Bang, StandardX Melbourne — Dine authentic Thai at the newly opened restaurant, BANG. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

Accessibility

The Cozy Suites have enough room around the bed for a wheelchair and the showers are roll-in. Lifts and facilities are also accessible.

Family-friendly?

There’s no reason you couldn’t bring the kids, but they’ll be sharing your bed. Cots are available; rollaway beds are not. If your family is furry, tell the booking team. You’ll get a pet waiver to sign at check-in, and a bowl, bed and treats will be supplied.

the lobby at StandardX Melbourne — StandardX offers visitors an attractive alternative to the average CBD stay. (Image: Carrie Hutchinson)

Details

Best for: Business travellers, families, and design-savvy travellers.
Address: 62 Rose Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne VIC
Cost: From $224 per night.

the dimly lit interior at StandardX Melbourne — StandardX is the little sister of the original Standard. (Image: Rhiannon Taylor)

Follow our guide to all things Melbourne.

Video credit: Visit Victoria/Tourism Australia

The Grampians just might be the ultimate antidote for the metropolis, writes one returning Aussie ready to disconnect from the modern world and reconnect to the Great outdoors.

There are no kangaroos back in Chicago: they’re all here in the Grampians/Gariwerd . In the heart of the Grampians National Park’s main gateway town, Halls Gap, pods of eastern greys are eating grass beside my parked rental car beneath the stars. Next morning, when I see the backyard of my rented villa on the edge of town for the first time, there are kangaroos feeding beside a slow-moving creek, lined with river red gums.

Five hundred metres up the road, 50 or so of them are eating by the side of the road in a paddock. I pull over to watch and spot three emus. Yellow-tailed black cockatoos fly overhead towards the tall green mountains just beyond town.

‘Kee-ow, keee-oww’… their calls fuse with the maniacal cackle of a kookaburra (or 10). Gawd, how I’ve missed the sound of them. Far above, a wedge-tailed eagle watches, and there you go: the ‘great birds of Australia’ trifecta, all half a kay from the town limits.

Exchanging city chaos for country calm

kangaroos near Halls Gap, Grampians National Park — The park is renowned for its significant diversity of native fauna species. (Image: Visit Victoria/Robert Blackburn)

I’ve come to the Grampians to disconnect, but the bush offers a connection of its own. This isn’t just any bush, mind you. The Grampians National Park is iconic for many reasons, mostly for its striking sandstone mountains – five ridges run north to south, with abrupt, orange slopes which tumble right into Halls Gap – and for the fact there’s 20,000 years of traditional rock art. Across these mountains there are more than 200 recorded sites to see, created by the Djab Wurrung, Jardwadjali and Gunditjmara peoples. It’s just like our outback… but three hours from Melbourne.

I’ve come here for a chance at renewal after the chaos of my life in America’s third-largest city, Chicago, where I live for now, at the whim of a relative’s cancer journey. Flying into Melbourne’s airport, it only takes an hour’s drive to feel far away from any concept of suburbia. When I arrive in Halls Gap two hours later, the restaurant I’m eating at clears out entirely by 7:45pm; Chicago already feels a lifetime ago.

The trails and treasures of the Grampians

sunrise at Grampians National Park /Gariwerd — Grampians National Park /Gariwerd covers almost 2000 square kilometres. (Image: Ben Savage)

Though the national park covers almost 2000 square kilometres, its best-known landmarks are remarkably easy to access. From my carpark here, among the cockatoos and kangaroos on the fringe of Halls Gap, it only takes 60 seconds’ driving time before I’m winding my way up a steep road through rainforest, deep into the mountains.

Then it’s five minutes more to a carpark that serves as a trailhead for a hike to one of the park’s best vantage points, The Pinnacles . I walk for an hour or so, reacquainting myself with the smells and the sounds of the Aussie bush, before I reach it: a sheer cliff’s edge lookout 500 metres up above Halls Gap.

walking through a cave, Hollow Mountain — Overlooking the vast Grampians landscape from Hollow Mountain. (Image: Robert Blackburn)

There are hikes and there are lookouts and waterfalls all across this part of the park near town. Some are a short stroll from a carpark; others involve long, arduous hikes through forest. The longest is the Grampians Peaks Trail , Victoria’s newest and longest iconic walk, which runs 160 kilometres – the entire length of Grampians National Park.

Local activities operator Absolute Outdoors shows me glimpses of the trail. The company’s owner, Adrian Manikas, says it’s the best walk he’s done in Australia. He says he’s worked in national parks across the world, but this was the one he wanted to bring his children up in.

“There’s something about the Grampians,” he says, as he leads me up a path to where there’s wooden platforms for tents, beside a hut looking straight out across western Victoria from a kilometre up in the sky (these are part of the guided hiking options for the trail). “There are things out here that you won’t see anywhere else in Australia.” Last summer, 80 per cent of the park was damaged by bushfire, but Manikas shows me its regrowth, and tells me of the manic effort put in by volunteers from town – with firefighters from all over Australia – to help save Halls Gap.

wildflowers in Grampians National Park — Spot wildflowers. (Image: Visit Victoria)

We drive back down to Halls Gap at dusk to abseil down a mountain under the stars, a few minutes’ walk off the main road into town. We have headlamps, but a full moon is enough to light my way down. It takes blind faith to walk backwards down a mountain into a black void, though the upside is I can’t see the extent of my descent.

Grampians National Park at sunset. (Image: Wine Australian)

The stargazing is ruined by the moon, of course, but you should see how its glow lights up the orange of the sandstone, like in a theme park. When I’m done, I stand on a rocky plateau drinking hot chocolate and listening to the Aussie animals who prefer nighttime. I can see the streets of Halls Gap off in the distance on this Friday night. The restaurants may stay open until 8pm tonight.

What else is on offer in The Grampians?

a boat travelling along the Wimmera River inDimboola — Travelling along the Wimmera River in Dimboola. (Image: Chris McConville)

You’ll find all sorts of adventures out here – from rock climbing to canoeing to hiking – but there’s more to the Grampians than a couple of thousand square kilometres of trees and mountains. Halls Gap may be known to most people, but what of Pomonal, and Dimboola, and Horsham? Here in the shadow of those big sandstone mountains there are towns and communities most of us don’t know to visit.

And who knew that the Grampians is home to Victoria’s most underrated wine region ? My disconnection this morning comes not in a forest, but in the tasting rooms and winery restaurants of the district. Like Pomonal Estate, barely 10 minutes’ drive east of Halls Gap, where UK-born chef Dean Sibthorp prepares a locally caught barramundi with lentil, pumpkin and finger lime in a restaurant beside the vines at the base of the Grampians. Husband-and-wife team Pep and Adam Atchison tell me stories as they pour their prize wines (shiraz is the hero in these parts).

dining at Pomonal Estate — Dine in a restaurant beside vines at Pomonal Estate. (Image: Tourism Australia)

Three minutes’ drive back down the road, long-time mates Hadyn Black and Darcy Naunton run an eclectic cellar door out of a corrugated iron shed, near downtown Pomonal. The Christmas before last, half the houses in Pomonal burnt down in a bushfire, but these locals are a resilient lot.

The fires also didn’t stop the construction of the first art centre in Australia dedicated to environmental art in a nature-based precinct a little further down the road (that’s Wama – the National Centre for Environmental Arts), which opened in July. And some of the world’s oldest and rarest grape vines have survived 160 years at Best’s Wines, outside the heritage town of Great Western. There’s plantings here from the year 1868, and there’s wines stored in century-old barrels within 150-year-old tunnels beneath the tasting room. On the other side of town, Seppelt Wines’ roots go back to 1865. They’re both only a 30-minute drive from Halls Gap.

Salingers of Great Western — Great Western is a charming heritage town. (Image: Griffin Simm)

There’s more to explore yet; I drive through tiny historic towns that barely make the map. Still part of the Grampians, they’re as pretty as the mountains behind them: full of late 19th-century/early 20th-century post offices, government offices and bank buildings, converted now to all manner of bric-a-brac stores and cafes.

The Imaginarium is one, in quirky Dimboola, where I sleep in the manager’s residence of an old National Australia Bank after a gourmet dinner at the local golf club, run by noted chef and teacher, Cat Clarke – a pioneer of modern Indigenous Australian cooking. Just south, I spend an entire afternoon at a winery, Norton Estate Wines, set on rolling calico-coloured hills that make me think of Tuscany, chit-chatting with owners Chris and Sam Spence.

Being here takes me back two decades, when I lived here for a time. It had all seemed as foreign as if I’d driven to another planet back then (from Sydney/Warrane), but there seemed something inherently and immediately good about this place, like I’d lived here before.

And it’s the Australian small-town familiarity of the Grampians that offers me connection back to my own country. Even in the better-known Halls Gap, Liz from Kerrie’s Creations knows I like my lattes with soy milk and one sugar. And while I never do get the name of the lady at the local Ampol station, I sure know a lot about her life.

Kookaburras on a tree — Kookaburras are one of some 230 bird species. (Image: Darren Donlen)

You can be a local here in a day; how good is that? In Chicago, I don’t even know who my neighbour is. Though each day at dusk – when the kangaroos gather outside my villa, and the kookaburras and the black cockatoos shout out loud before settling in to sleep – I prefer the quieter connection I get out there in the bush, beneath these orange mountains.

A traveller’s checklist

Staying there

Sleep beside the wildlife on the edge of Halls Gap at Serenity .

Playing there

abseiling down Hollow Mountain — Hollow Mountain is a popular abseiling site.

Go abseiling under the stars or join a guided hike with Absolute Outdoors . Visit Wama , Australia’s first environmental art centre. Check out Dimboola’s eccentric Imaginarium .

Eating there

steak, naan bread and beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap serves a great steak on naan bread.

Eat world-class cuisine at Pomonal Estate . Dine and stay at much-revered icon Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. The ‘steak on naan’ at Halls Gap brewhouse Paper Scissors Rock , can’t be beat.

Dunkeld Arboretum in Grampians National Park — The serene Dunkeld Arboretum.

For Halls Gap’s best breakfasts head to Livefast Cafe . Sip local wines at Great Western’s historic wineries, Best’s Wines , Seppelt Wines and Norton Estate Wines .

two glasses of beer at Paper Scissors Rock in Halls Gap — Sink a cold one at Paper Scissors Rock.

Inside the newly opened The StandardX, Melbourne hotel