Yugen, Poodle, Atria and Circl Chefs on What To Expect at Serve 2025

When the January tennis season rolls around, it means one thing – Serve Festival is back.

This year the two-week dining festival, presented by Broadsheet in partnership with Mastercard, features a series of priceless, one-off dinners care of Atria, Circl, Yugen and Poodle. Each one is exclusive to Mastercard cardholders, and offers both venue staples and unique dishes designed just for the occasion.

Ahead of the 2025 festival launch, we spoke to some of the chefs behind these special menus to find out what to expect.

Emma Dawson, head chef at Poodle Bar & Bistro

What’s inspiring your Serve menu this year?

It’s going to be summertime, so it’s hot, people want rich food, but they also don’t want it to be heavy. So we’re thinking of taking a bit of a journey, starting with fresh seafood – a little tartare, which is just a classic Poodle dish with the tarragon soy egg – and then finishing with a semifreddo in a bit of jelly.

What should people expect from Poodle’s Serve dinner?

I think what Poodle does really well is that old-world charm where it’s not just about food, it’s not just about service but we all work really well together. So it’s going to be upstairs, where it’s a little bit sexy, a little bit gorgeous and it almost feels like a little private club. There’ll be the classic Poodle flair, where we have bubbles on arrival, a little canapé while you mingle, and then sitting down for a couple of share-style [dishes].

Beside Poodle’s classic prawn cocktail, what dish are you most excited to share?

The broad bean with green olive tapenade – I ran that as a special because I wanted to test it out for this menu, and it ate very well. It’s stracciatella seasoned and served with a broad bean and olive tapenade. It’s a little bit salty from the green olives and served with a house-made coffee sourdough.

Elias Salomonsson, executive chef at Circl Wine House

Tell us about your approach to this year’s Serve menu.

With the Serve menu, we decided to really showcase who we are. So some of the dishes the public hasn’t seen, and some of it really nails us as a venue. I have quite a big focus on using local produce as much as I can, because I think the less food that has to travel, the better the quality is going to be.

What are some of the dishes you’re excited to share?

[The smoked eel tart] is probably one of my favourite snacks – it’s basically a play on growing up in Sweden. It’s like a creamy, smoky, slightly pickled adventure, and it’s absolutely delicious.

One of the main courses is the David Blackmore tri-tip. For me, the Blackmore Wagyu is probably one of the best in Australia. It’s a beautiful, heavily marbled cut. It’s a perfect steak, to be honest.

Circl has over 4000 bottles in the cellar – what role does wine have to play on your Serve menu?

Everything with the food menu is designed with wine in mind. All the dishes are very different. Instead of having a common theme throughout, they’re quite different in flavour so that the somms can really play around with pairing different wines.

Michael Greenlaw, executive chef at Atria

What’s on the menu that you’re excited to share?

We always love to start with our Baker Bleu sourdough. We save all the crusts and turn it into a sourdough miso and fold it into our butter. It’s a really good story of zero waste and turning something that might not be used into something delicious.

Then we go into this beautiful appetiser where we use a wasabi leaf and charred broad beans from our woodfire grill, and jazz it up with some preserved wild garlic. Then the priceless hero of the night is this Victorian crudo.

That Victorian crudo is going to feature some lesser-known fish species. Why is that important?

Whether it’s longsnout boarfish or a beautiful grass whiting ... it’s a bit of an education piece, where we can teach our guests that, hey, we can take the pressure off your regular whiting, flathead and snapper, and there are another 30-odd species out there that are super delicious.

What makes the night at Atria special?

Our restaurant is positioned on level 80 of the Ritz-Carlton and we have 360-degree views, so we always like to show our guests where our food comes from – whether it’s pointing to Macedon Ranges for our beautiful duck or to Port Phillip Bay, where we get our short-spine sea urchins and beautiful line-caught snapper.

Stephen Nairn, culinary director at Yugen Dining

What can people expect from Yugen’s dinner this year?

It’s going to be tennis time – that hot time of year when things are a bit spicy during the day. I’m trying to have a menu that’s well balanced: light, not too intense, not too rich, but still delivers flavour bombs at each stage.

You mention tennis time – any tennis influence on your menu?

I’m actually a massive tennis fan – I’m in a tennis club with a group of other Melbourne chefs. It’s a little hard to make a menu that’s related to tennis but it’s got a celebratory feel with a generous yuzu Toki sour welcome drink, which is a highball. Then the main course is a cracker – something we don’t usually serve at Yugen, which is a dry-aged duck.

What do you think will be the highlights of the night for guests?

There’s a sashimi course of rock flathead. We get the flathead, very lightly season it, then press it between seaweed for about six hours and it has a very light cure on it. We then slice it with furikake spice and some finger lime, and then punches of shiso.

I think what people are going to enjoy is seeing a few different sides to Yugen, a few flavour profiles that the might not [be familiar with], like the baby corn with smoked eel and brown butter.

Serve Festival is presented by Broadsheet in partnership with Mastercard.