Bistro Guillaume

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Riverside, Crown Complex, Southbank, 9292 4751

My score: 4/5

I’m not sure what your idea of heaven is but I just ate mine. It was a savoury soufflé at Bistro Guillaume and it was as jiggly, fluffy and intensely cheesy as my wildest dreams dared posit. A jaunty side salad of cress, green apple batons and walnuts was a sprightly, crunchy counterpoint to the Roquefort richness. It’s the sort of classic French cooking you get here. Souffle, steak frites, snails and confit duck are all wrought well, ticking the boxes without doodling all over the page.

Ingredients are of high quality, preparation is on point, and service is crisp. You’ll hear the occasional French accent but there’s no extraneous ooh-la-la. I needed all the world’s ooh-las for the roast chicken anyway, a display of exemplary cooking that resulted in superb juicy flesh and just-crisp skin. It came with Paris mash, that is, butter and milk thickened ever so slightly with potato, and a deep, dark jus that was so good I almost punished the room with a spontaneous rendition of La Marseillaise. Dessert is like meeting all your old friends at a party. “Oh, hello lemon tart! It’s you, profiteroles! Oh, it’s been too long, tarte tatin.” I promise not too much time will pass before I catch up with my tarte tatin amie again because this apple pastry was a sweet, fruity, buttery delight. The lemon tart was a paragon of the genre too, with its bruleed top and pucker-up citrus tang.

I’ve always thought of Bistro Guillaume as a summer restaurant – that spacious riverside terrace, those naughty peek-a-boo bloomer light shades – but it’s lovely to be here in winter. The restaurant is a flexible, reliable option for pre-theatre, business dining, gossip sessions or simply to eat roast chicken while watching icy rain smash into the Yarra.

See their website.

More French inspired:

Bibelot, 285-287 Coventry Street, South Melbourne, 9690 2688.
Chez Dre has a new patisserie arm to the business so it can properly showcase its delicate, decadent patisserie, gateaux, biscuits and macarons.

Brooks of Melbourne, Basement 115-117 Collins Street, Melbourne, 9001 8755.
It’s not strictly French but classic cooking techniques are the bedrock of each dish and foie gras, shellfish and truffle are sure to be hidden in there somewhere.

Bistro Thierry, 511 Malvern Road, Hawksburn, 9824 0888.
Every French bistro cliché is wrought wonderfully well here, whether it’s snails with garlic butter, duck a l’orange, crème brulee or the Gallic charm from the waiters.

First published in The Age, July 19, 2015.