Lawyers, Guns and Money

Chongqing-style fried chicken with chilli and pepper.

Back to restaurant reviews
505 Little Collins Street (enter from Church Lane), Melbourne, 9614 0445

My score: 3.5/5

There’s nothing like a plate of tripe and pig’s ear at 8am to make you think about the concept of breakfast. But there I was, tucking in, tonguing tripe, slurping ear, happy as a (heartily carnivorous) clam at high tide, with nary a thought for the smashed avocado mountains dotting Melbourne breakfast plates for miles around.

I had my epiphany and I’ll say it here and I’ll say it now: breakfast orthodoxy begone. Give us soft, frilly cow’s stomach of a morning, douse it with hot mustard, and let us awaken anew and afresh. Let us leave the poached hordes to their soft eggs and their candied bacon, to their self-righteous bircher rubble, to their sad, wilted spinach. Give me a breakfast sozzled with chilli oil and let me see that I’m alive.

In short, give me breakfast at Lawyers, Guns and Money, the new legal district cafe from chef Victor Liong. Liong’s restaurant, Lee Ho Fook, has helped us rethink contemporary Chinese food. Here, he’s giving us classic Chinese breakfasts made palatable for a suits-and-heels crowd. So, yes, tripe and other braised meats, but also congee, a most benign rice porridge, especially when lacking the liver, heart and tendon tendencies you’d find in more traditional Chinese eateries. The accompaniments here include a relish with ginger and ‘century’ egg (preserved egg but not super funky), fried bread and spicy pickles.

Come for lunch and it’s mostly chicken, though the menu will soon expand. Fried wings or drumettes come either Chongqing style with chilli and Sichuan pepper, or stickier Shandong style with black vinegar. Both types have the juicy, luscious finish of brutally flash-fried protein. The gentler dishes include Hainanese braised chicken (sweet, winningly sticky, subtly gingered), and a bowl of egg noodles with rich, dark beefy broth and fall-apart brisket. I am seeing a happy winter in this room.

More radical than the menu is the coffee situation. What kind of crazy person opens anything – food truck, pub, envelope – in Melbourne without paying $20,000 for an espresso machine? This one. The coffee is Vietnamese style drip-filter coffee; I love it with condensed milk. Otherwise, there’s tea, juice and spicy tomato – with vodka, if you like, because sometimes the proof of the breakfast pudding is in the hangover you have by lunchtime.

See their website.

More New and Fun:

Tim Ho Wan, 206 Bourke Street, Melbourne, no phone.
It’s a new Melbourne rite of passage to line up for pork buns at Tim Ho Wan, the newest branch of a Michelin-starred Hong Kong dumpling house.

Oter, 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
I’m excited about the opening of this contemporary classic French restaurant in the old Yu-u basement premises. Chef Florent Gerardin has local runs on the board at Vue de Monde and Pei Modern.

Matcha Mylk Bar, corner Acland and Carlisle Street, St Kilda, 0410 996 494.
It’s vegan and very happy about it. Along with fake coffee curiosities (mushroom latte?) there are ‘longevity bowls’ from places where people live for ages, such as green tea rice, edamame and seaweed a la Okinawa.

First published in The Age, 10th April 2016.