Check in to this hotel to enjoy a piece of Paris right here in Melbourne

Where: 16 Murphy street, South Yarra, Victoria

How much: Superior rooms are from $295 per night; deluxe suites are from $475 per night

The Lyall's founding owners, Peter and Rowina Thomas, were mainstays of South Yarra's social scene, and the bar at the hotel was once the spot where well-heeled locals mingled with their designer-dressed neighbours and ogled discreetly at celebrity visitors. The Lyall closed for renovations during the first COVID-19 lockdown, and was later sold to the company that owns the Royce Hotel on St Kilda Road, which reimagined and refurbished the property once more, finally reopening its sliding doors in March this year.

The reborn Lyall markets itself as a hotel for people who don't like hotels. I love hotels, so I was not sure what I would make of the Lyall.

The Lyall Hotel sits in a quiet, leafy street about 300 metres from the boutiques and bistros of Toorak Road, South Yarra.

Just as the nearby section of Toorak Road aspires to be Parisian, so too does the Lyall. Some rooms have Parisienne balconies and the whole place aspires to the feeling of a grand maison particuliere.

And just as Toorak Road has acquired a certain Japanese flavour, with sushi bars and handbag-hunting tourists, so too has the Lyall. Every balcony looks out onto the Japanese maple garden. The lobby is decorated with faintly amusing sculptures of a style that might best be described as "corporate modern".

I'm in a Deluxe Suite which looks out onto a patio. The bed is fantastically comfortable. The minibar is almost the size of a real bar, and laid out like a buffet with drinks and snacks and the most beautifully arranged selection of complimentary sweet things I have ever seen.

The contours of the minibar seem mirrored by the bathroom suite, with its twin washbowls and colourful array of miniature toiletries. The bathroom houses both a shower cubicle and a bath, and faces a slightly constricted dressing-room area. There's also an alcove with a desk and a chaise lounge, which don't really seem to belong in the same room.

The Lyall has not yet restored its lunch and dinner service, so I only have the a la carte breakfast to go by: the omelette is fine, the pancakes are divine. The default restaurant for the hotel's clientele is probably Toorak Road's long-established France-Soir, where the French-speaking waitstaff give the curious impression of being actors employed to impersonate actual French serveurs. They are unusually involved in the dining experience, largely in a good way. I can recommend the entrecote steak frites and the rillettes de canard.

South Yarra is all about shopping. Toorak Road is decorated with sculptures of handbags and shoes, like a monument to shopping. Nearby Chapel Street has a lot of ... shops.

The eclectic expertise of the staff. When my Uber didn't arrive because the app had loaded the wrong pick-up address, a front desker borrowed my phone to correctly direct the driver, then explained to the driver how it was that concrete walls might deflect the GPS signal upon which Uber relies, causing it to bounce to a neighbouring street and supply the app with incorrect data.

When I returned to the hotel that same evening, I asked him how he knew this. He told me that he was a doctoral chemistry student.

His colleague then fixed my broken glasses.

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The writer was a guest of the Lyall.