I sat down with Franck Sammut, the quietly charismatic force behind Upper Middle in South Melbourne, a new baguette‑and‑pizza spot that already feels like a neighbourhood favourite. Franck has spent his whole life in hospitality, from working in his dad’s restaurant as a teenager to decades on the floor in some of Melbourne’s most iconic venues. Now he’s finally opened a place of his own, built on warmth, good bread, and the kind of genuine service people are craving right now. We talked about the joy and chaos of starting a business, the art of keeping things simple, the personalities that make a great team, and what it means to create a space where people feel looked after. It’s a conversation that gives a clear sense of who Franck is and what he’s trying to build and I loved it.
Hi, Franck. It’s lovely to be at Upper Middle. Let’s start with… what does the name mean?
I wanted something a bit different, not something Italian or French, but a bit quirky like myself. I’m a little bit different sometimes. Upper Middle stems from a running joke I’ve had with my longtime friend, Donny, about being upper middle class or lower middle class. He’s always teased me that I’m a bit upper middle, and he feels lower middle. But he’s more upper middle than I am.
I thought it probably did have perhaps to do with the demographic or some such thing. I asked ChatGPT what it thought Upper Middle was, and it thought that you were being very clever and observational about café society in Melbourne.
There you go. There was perhaps an element of that.
It’s a really lovely building. The entrance is lovely, that curve of the brick wall. Is this a fairly new apartment building?
It’s six level office building by Fortis, about a year old. We’ve just gone in: brand new building, brand new business. With the design, I guess we wanted to add a bit of history. Hospitality is in my blood, with my father having restaurants, and I’ve been doing it since I left school in 1997.
Did you have a say in this layout?
The design? 100%. Initially we had the whole ground floor. We have split it in two. I wanted a restaurant bar, but the whole space was too big for me to do one restaurant. It’s very hard to fill a 120 plus venue. I’d rather have a 60, 70 seater restaurant, which will be stage two, hopefully, early next year with a beautiful bar. For now I wanted a grab and go for the business crowd. I’ve noticed everybody walks around in South Melbourne. You’ve got the main strip, you’ve got Albert Park, Port Melbourne, everybody’s rambling through the side streets. There’s a thousand people in the office building across the road. So I thought, a little baguette bar, fresh sandwiches, baked made to order, a pizza oven, because pizza’s been my favourite food since I was, I don’t know how old. That was a concept: get stage one humming along, and then just slowly grow.
What style pizzas are you doing?
We’ve done a bit of a Napolitan style, a bit doughy, but still not super doughy, between Roman and Naples. Nice flavours rather than lots of topping. European style, not the Aussie lavish way, pared back, but still generous.
It’s great just to keep things simple. It’s very European, isn’t it, to do one thing well, rather than have a lot of variety. Where do the baguettes come from?
We get them par baked by Baker in the Rye in Carlisle Street, by Miguel. He’s great. I tested a few along the way over the last few months, and he was the last one I sampled and the best. It all fell in line, bit by bit. You need the bread to have that bite to it, but not take over the filling. So that’s the one I found. He’s making a half baguette just for us.
It’s a great size, isn’t it? It’s what you get when you’re in France, the sandwiches with a bit of ham and cheese and maybe lettuce or something, just it’s so delicious. What are you doing with yours?
There’s that classic ham, cheese, butter. But we do a little bit of a take on it. I got a recipe frm a chef that I worked with. He said, try pickled beetroots, Comté cheese, premium ham, and alfalfa with a bit of butter. I’ve called it the Ham Dam. I’m a bit of an action fan, so, you know, Jean Claude Van Damme. Everybody loves chicken in Australia, so we’ve got a beautiful chicken mix. There’s a prosciutto, and we’ve got a veggie. For the vegetable baguette, I’ve got zucchinis from Selby, my sister-in-law, lives in the Dandenong Ranges. We use her organic zucchinis, pickle them, and put them through the baguette with a bit of a goat cheese mousse, capsicum, and a touch of aioli and pesto. It’s something different. Everybody’s doing pides, focaccias. I wanted to do a good baguette.
I’m 46. I don’t want to work for someone my whole life. I want to have a go. I don’t want to sit back when I’m 60 and go, I think I could have done that. I’d rather have a crack. You can only fail if you have a crack. If you don’t have a go, you’re not going to fail, you’re not going to succeed. You’re just not going to have a go. I think it was time.
Franck Sammut, Upper Middle
You’re opening in the evenings as well?
We do Sunday to Wednesday, 7am to 4pm. Then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, we will still open at 7am, but go all the way through till late. Last night, we had a good turnout. We had about 30 people for dinner: pizza, and we had a little tuna tartare as a special, with avocado mousse, and truffle oil. We did a steak, Scotch fillet. The aim is to see what the South Melbourne public wants. And if our guests demand a bit more variety at night instead of a pizza and salad, I’m happy to introduce a bit more of a teaser restaurant menu, which is what I want to bring next door and have three, four entrees rotating, and three, four mains, so you can come once, twice, three times a week, and always have something different. But I don’t want to do that straight away and just have people come in and say, Oh, but we’re eating in a cafe.
I see that your head chef, Lakshay has been at places that you’ve been at, as well, so have you known him for a while?
I worked at Bistro Thierry for two years part time, when I was renovating a house, and it was a lot of fun. I met Lakshay there. He worked there for about eight years. I left, started looking for chefs. He was interested. We went through the process, and he came out on top. He is a good chef.
You are described in a lot of articles as a hospitality veteran.
I’m a bit young for that. I’m 46 years old. I don’t think I’m a veteran yet. One day maybe. I’ve always enjoyed looking after people. When I first started in hospitality, it was at the old Stokehouse, the one that burned down. I was in the bar for most of that. I got onto the floor at France Soir, and it was really uncomfortable at first, because, behind a bar, you’ve got protection. It’s your little space. When you’re on the floor, you’re in the client’s world. I learned a lot of lessons at France Soir from a great team that really took on hospitality as a profession, not just a part time job. I have great memories. The last lesson I learned was to look after the customers and make them the most important. That just stuck with me. Without them, we don’t have a job, do we? Without consistency, without all those things, we wouldn’t have restaurants or dining. Everyone will come and have a look. You have to keep them coming back, and you don’t do that by being unhospitable, or unfriendly, or on your phone, while they walk in. You have to be attentive, make them feel welcome. It’s not complicated.
Hospitality, it is about being hospitable, and many of the places I go to are really lovely, but yes, I’ve certainly been to places where hospitality isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.
Whether you’re an owner or a customer, you want people that are employed to do their job and do it with passion. That’s what you try and look for. Now that I’m a business owner, I’ve looked for a younger team, rather than people with names. I don’t mind putting a bit of passion into training and creating…not a generation, but more people that want to spend their livelihood in hospitality. It’s not the greatest thing for family life. I have a 13 soon to be 14 year old daughter and wife, and they are beautiful and healthy, but a bit more time at home would be great. Especially opening a business, but that’s hospitality. Y
There is a lot of talk about the challenges in hospitality currently: high costs and so on. What made you want to be a business owner now?
A few things. I’m 46. I don’t want to work for someone my whole life. I want to have a go. I don’t want to sit back when I’m 60 and go, I think I could have done that. I’d rather have a crack. You can only fail if you have a crack. If you don’t have a go, you’re not going to fail, you’re not going to succeed. You’re just not going to have a go. I think it was time. As a wife would say, the universe, everything lined up. She’s a big universe girl. I’m not so much, but, hey, things seem to have lined up. Looking back at the little achievements of just putting the concept together, getting the design done, having people come on board, everything’s so hard when you are going through it. Then you look back and go, that wasn’t actually that hard. But as you’re going through it, it’s the most challenging thing ever. There have been some great lessons so far and great times, but I think the best is coming. The first week we decided to open was Mother’s Day week, which was maybe not a mistake, but definitely a challenge. We picked up on a few mistakes, and we won’t be doing them again. In those moments, you pick up where your staff can get better, who’s hungry, who’s not, who’s devoted, who doesn’t care. That’s another lesson I picked up along the way: you can’t have eight people in a team that are the same. We can’t have eight guys who care too much. You can’t have guys that don’t care. You have to have a bit of everyone. We don’t please everybody. I may be palatable to one person and not the other. You have to have a guy that doesn’t care, a guy that’s a clown. One that’s too serious, a guy that’s up himself a little bit, a guy that’s too generous. And then together, they create a great team.
I’m lucky. I’m just finishing our second week, and I’ve worked more hours than I can count. But at the same time, it’s all been fun and while I’m tired and exhausted, at the same time, I’m loving what I do. Nothing beats that feeling you’re coming to work for yourself and look after people, and meet the suburb, and meet people coming in. I
Franck Sammut, Upper Middle
Where do you start with training a team?
I guess training is… asking. Communicating and saying, where do you find that you’re strong? Where do you find that you’re not? Where do you want to learn? Do you want to learn? What areas do you think you excel in? That’s another thing; it’s not just about getting paid. It’s about learning and creating and growing professionally, personally, as well. I think that’s part of the job. You want people to feel proud of the work they’ve done and to enjoy service and so on and come home and say, oh, I started maybe making sandwiches and baguettes, and this week, I’ve been doing the till, and I wasn’t comfortable with it last week. As someone gets more confident, they grow, they get better. Knowledge is confidence. I’m still learning.
Your father had restaurants as well, and you’ve got that beautiful wall inside with all the photos of La Brasserie. Maybe hospitality runs in the blood?
I would say in my blood, yes.
Did you work in his restaurant?
I did the till when I was about 15, 16, at his restaurant. I fell in love with the buzz of it all, and the different characters, and I was staying up a bit later than I was used to. It was fun. It was good. As you mentioned, there’s that beautiful wall inside. I’ve got old artwork, from 1890 to 1900s newspapers, the colours are beautiful, and it just adds a bit of depth in history and warmth, to a new building. Then you’ve got the family side of it: Dad and hospo-inspired little bits and pieces, and then some quirky artwork, which is a bit how I am. That mix just adds a bit of warmth in there.
Is your surname Maltese?
There is some Maltese in there. My dad’s parents, his dad was Maltese, French, I believe, and his mum is Sicilian Italian. Tough woman. Super stubborn.
I wonder, obviously not all Maltese or Sicilian of French people are drawn to hospitality or food, but maybe there’s an element of that?
Possibly. I think they like entertaining. I’m lucky. I’m just finishing our second week, and I’ve worked more hours than I can count. But at the same time, it’s all been fun and while I’m tired and exhausted, at the same time, I’m loving what I do. Nothing beats that feeling you’re coming to work for yourself and look after people, and meet the suburb, and meet people coming in. It’s a new clientele I haven’t looked after before. Some of my old customers from France Soir are touching base, which is really nice and coming in to say hello and support. It’s nice to be looked after. There’s a few restaurants, which aren’t necessarily well known and the first 10 times you go, you might not get the service you want, but then they finally recognise you, and you become a local.
I think people are really leaning into that now. Everyone’s a bit on edge at the moment, and I just feel when it comes to going out, that they are seeking good, cosy, simple places, genuine places, where you can have a conversation and they know my name and all that kind of thing.
I love going to new places, and it could be the best new restaurant, but you have to have wait staff that’s able to have banter and muck around. The menu, the service and the wine can all be awesome, but then you can’t even have a joke. I think that’s what’s lacking in some higher end restaurants. Wait staff are hard to find as well. Sometimes you have to teach them how to speak to people. Not everybody’s comfortable. As I said before, speaking to customers was hard for me at first. But I guess after 20 odd years, it becomes a bit easier.
What are you most looking forward to over the next few months?
Building it up and seeing it grow, seeing the team grow and being able to sustain and build a team, grow together. I’m looking forward to seeing where we can go. I’ve never been a long term, looking to the future, kind of guy. But that’s another lesson I learned from someone I worked with is to always think long term. You have to sort out goals. I’m interested to see what the year brings. I think we opened at the right time, coming into winter, and hopefully, a bit of momentum will carry us through that. Then it will be racing carnival, Christmas. And before we know it, we’re a year old. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
Upper Middle, 34 Eastern Road, South Melbourne