Botanical: 169 Domain Road, South Yarra, 9820 7888
My score: 3.5/5
If anyone understands reinvention, it’s the residents of South Yarra, where if you’re not jogging the Tan, it’s either because sweat wrecks fresh Botox or because your hair is wrapped in foils. Owners Colonial Leisure shut down this iconic restaurant last year, curtailing a funk that set in after chef Paul Wilson moved on. They’ve since spent a truckload on a refurb and lured superstar chef Cheong Liew from semi-retirement and Adelaide.
So does it work? Yes, more or less. There’s haute bistro dining in the wine store (congee, croque monsieur, Caesar salad with chilli sardines). The restaurant proper is dimmer, carpeted and truncated by a glassed private room. It’s comfortable rather than arresting but the fact that diners still share toilets with the bar crowd is a flaw. The mood shift is jarring and, to get specific, I expect a vomit-free restroom after eating an $81 steak. A glitch? I’d let it pass if my companion didn’t return from the gents with his own spew report. Service is professional but a little self-conscious. We don’t need share plates or fusion food explained anymore.
Cheong Liew’s food is smart and special, thanks to creative use of Asian and Euro flavours rather than overly fancy cookery. Fans may recognise elements of some dishes. The sourdough, spiked with rye, is the best restaurant bread I’ve had recently. One of the well-priced starters is an octopus salad: tentacles are fried with burnt olives, lemongrass and chilli then served with avocado, eggplant, pickled eggs and sweet/spicy aioli. It’s inspired and exuberant.
Monumental, expensive main courses include a ‘so crazy it might work’ pork folly including salted cod, laksa sauce, sage and chilli butter. It does succeed, in a mad rollercoaster way, not least because the beautiful meat snuggles happily with both butter and laksa. That $81 steak, a supercharged surf ‘n’ turf, is a skyscraper eye fillet with truffle and foie gras sauce, fresh truffle and a decadent scattering of spanner crab. It’s ridiculously luxurious, the culinary equivalent of a billionaire with a diamond-dripping blonde on each arm, but it does taste great. The Dingwu vegetarian plate is the necessary antidote, an elegant temple offering that celebrates texture and tone via tofu, tempeh, rice and vegetables. It’s the dish of the night, though the black rice pudding with caramelised pineapple is no slouch.
Liew’s food doesn’t have the bam-kapow bluster of vanguard Melbourne dining but its careful intrigue may be more enduring. I’d say the Bot is back.
See their website.
See my review of Botanical from April 2010
The Millswyn, 131-133 Domain Road, South Yarra, 9866 5627.
The Lynch’s rethink is a little bit Cape Cod, a smidge country kitchen and perfectly South Yarra. Sit in the dining room for modernish Frenchish, take it easy in the corner lounge or upstairs cocktail bar.
NorthSouth Eatery, 760 Chapel Street, South Yarra, 9827 6221.
There are plenty of all-day eateries but not many of them do everything well. Come for emergency morning coffee (and fancy eggs), great wine in good glassware and unfussily excellent lunch and dinner eats like pork Scotch fillet with roesti and spiced apple chutney.
MoPho Noodle Bar, 7 Yarra Street, South Yarra, 9827 0699.
Newly opened next to Outpost is another addition to the crack St Ali stable, a noodle house with an adventurous eye on South East Asia. Slurp noodles in soupy, wokked, curried and salad incarnations.
March 20, 2011
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