Brooks

Basement 115-117 Collins Street (enter from George Parade), Melbourne, 9001 8755

My score: 4/5

Right now, when people ask me where they should eat, I’m telling them Brooks, Brooks, Brooks because the food is interesting and delicious, and the experience fun and flexible. Basement restaurants can feel cut off and claustrophobic but Brooks emanates a tingling feeling of potential.

The chef is Nicolas Poelaert, previously at Carlton’s Embrasse. Some dishes have made the journey from the old restaurant but there’s an ease and liveliness at Brooks which contrasts with the earnestness that characterised Embrasse. Put it down to experience, a buzzier location with a separate bar, the genial and expert service, a nimble wine list, and certainly the approach of old-hand business owners Gerald Diffey and Mario di Ienno (Gerald’s Bar) who have allowed the cook to cook. There’s a spine to Brooks, a sense of history, a feeling of reading the mood and writing the future.

Poelaert is a French chef with a modern outlook and his food is expressive, thoughtful and delightfully pretty. The menu is a contemporary pick-and-mix affair without the entrée and main distinctions that some find helpful and others dismiss as strangling. Smaller tastes might be as simple as oysters or beef charcuterie and as clever (and filling) as a ‘cheese and crackers’ dish that turns out to be rye puffs piped full of blue cheese. There are substantial roast dishes for sharing and a burger that speaks to the all-day dining nature of the business.

A ‘seasonal’ heading tops a list of adventurous medium-sized dishes of subtlety and hidden delights. Unusual combinations tend to work or are at least restrained enough not to jar. Trumpeter fish is touched by curry powder, wasabi and green strawberries yet the most striking thing about the dish is how perfectly the fillet is cooked. Even an unlikely three-way of pork, seaweed and squid does a merry jig. The Forest Floor dessert is an Embrasse favourite featuring a mushroom made from hazelnut parfait, scatterings of sparky mint-and-sorrel granita and popcorn-crunchy pork crackling. It’s a fairy garden with gustatory merit. Other dishes lean on tradition. There’s aligot, a silken cheesy potato mash, and the meli symphony of vegetables, flowers and leaves that has long been Poelaert’s homage to French master Michel Bras. Poelaert’s current approach to the meli rejoices in nature instead of tiptoeing through it with reverence, tapping into an easy joy that’s emblematic of the Brooks experience.

See their website.

More basement restaurants:

Little Hunter, 195 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, 9654 0090
Opening in the first week of March 2013 in the George’s building, Little Hunter is a new-style steakhouse with a focus on humanely sourced meats. I swoon at the sound of the rib-eye with beef fat butter.

The Moat, Basement 176 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, 9094 7820
Wander to the Wheeler Centre to find this hideyhole for reading, discussing, drinking and eating. The food is snacky and it’s crafted with care.

Izakaya Den, Basement 114 Russell Street, Melbourne, 9654 2977
I love sitting, sipping sake and snacking on corn kakiage (tempura-fried corn kernels) with green tea salt at this cool Japanese eating house. Be prepared to wait for a spot.

First published in The Age, February 24, 2013