Char Dining

Cured Kingfish with avocado puree

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3/346 Belmore Road, Balwyn, 0479 059 532

My score: 3.5/5

The last time I ate Mathew Macartney and Gavin Evans’ food it was in the stately dining rooms of Eleonore’s at Chateau Yering, set amidst formal gardens in the Yarra Valley. This time it’s in the chefs’ own restaurant, a modest shopfront in Balwyn with views over a carpark shadowed by a supermarket. Luckily, food can be transporting.

Despite the humble surrounds, Char is the restaurant this neighbourhood needs, with a concise contemporary menu, prices kept in check by sensible produce choices, and a canny balance between fine dining flourish and button-pushing favourites.

Cured kingfish is elegantly presented with shaved radish, dots of avocado puree and cucumber batons; the fish is sweet and succulent and the flavours marry well. A salad of juicy late-season tomatoes and torn burrata is an easy win. Thai-style tuna on betel leaves is fresh, zesty and fun to eat. Snacky fried chicken on the bone is straight from the KFC playbook, crunchy without and juicy within, and there’s funky cut-through from sriracha chilli sauce and housemade pickles.

The namesake chargrill plus skilled, watchful cooking means fine beef is turned into excellent meals, beautifully caramelised, cooked as ordered and well-rested. Steak is simple but restaurants so often do it badly. Everything is done right here, all the way from sourcing to saucing, respecting both animal, producer and diner.

A peanut butter parfait with yuzu curd started as a dessert special but has graduated to the menu proper. I can see why: nutty ice cream with caramel notes, dark chocolate mousse and tart yuzu (Japanese citrus) curd are a very happy trio.

You can feel that Char’s chefs have a big stake in the restaurant. The ex-pizza joint has been decorated on a shoestring with most of the focus on the kitchen. In fact, chefs Macartney and Evans extended the cooking area by two metres and can often be seen sneaking peeks into the dining room with ‘wow, I can’t believe we own a restaurant!’ expressions on their faces. What they see is a room full of contented locals, embracing Char for can’t-be-bothered-cooking weeknights and let’s-dress-up weekends. It’s BYO for now but once a liquor license comes through (hello, City of Booroondara!) Char’s charms will shine even brighter.

See their website.

More steak:

Vlado’s, 61 Bridge Road, Richmond, 9428 5833.
The charcoal grill at Vlado’s has been hot since 1964. Vlado Gregurek died in 2012 but his meticulous appreciation for the art of cooking steak lives on in this classic Melbourne restaurant.

Grossi Florentino Grill, 80 Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9662 1811.
Just renovated and looking sharp, the ground floor grill has a great ‘bistecca’ menu, including a ‘big rib’ for two people.

Grosvenor Hotel, 10 Brighton Road, St Kilda East, 9531 1542.
They must be doing something right with the steak here, given that Heston Blumenthal popped in for a Scotch fillet while he was in town recently.

First published in The Age, March 13th, 2016.