Something new and exciting is coming to Melbourne’s CBD, courtesy of two Australian hospitality heavyweights – Andrea Gualdi and Ian Curley – and a boutique hotel group.

Gualdi is a world-class bartender and the co-founder of theatrical Sydney cocktail bar Maybe Sammy. He left the group in late 2021, but for the last four years the bar has held the World’s 50 Best title of the best bar in Australasia. This year it slipped slightly in the rankings, but was still crowned the 29th best bar in the world last month.

Curley, meanwhile, is a lauded British-born, Melbourne-based chef and hospitality consultant – and former European Group executive chef – who’s also behind Lona Misa, Kirk’s Wine Bar and French Saloon, which transitioned from a restaurant to an events space early last year.

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Next month, on the corner of Little Bourke Street and Amphlett Lane, the pair will open Amphlett House – an upmarket 120-seat taphouse with slicker-than-your-average pub food, inside the soon-to-relaunch Laneways by Ovolo hotel, inspired by ’80s Memphis.

It’s a new challenge for Gualdi, now Ovolo’s creative beverage director. “My background has been completely focused on cocktail bars, so I am thrilled with this unique opportunity,” he said in a statement. While Curley, the group’s creative culinary director, will apply his culinary prowess to unpretentious but elevated pub dining.

The hotel, which is set to launch in mid-November just after Amphlett House, will have 42 colourful rooms that channel the rollicking town in south-west Tennessee. “We have relished the creative challenge of creating a sophisticated and stylish space that gives a nod to the building’s ’80s era,” interior designer Rachel Luchetti – of Sydney-based firm Luchetti Krelle – said in a statement. “Memphis nostalgia was a perfect fit for this project, and we have interpreted this through injecting colour and energy in the classic Ovolo manner.”

Amphlett House is set to open at 19 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne in early November. The Ovolo Laneways hotel is set to open in mid-November.

ovolohotels.com/amphletthouse