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163 Chapel Street, Windsor, 9533 2055
My score: 13/20
When a chef does half a dozen things to transform a chicken breast into thin crisps the only justification is that it eats better than it would have if it still looked like a piece of bird. I’m contemplating this with a mouthful of “chicken chip” at Morris Jones. A hapless fillet has been pureed, reshaped, baked, fried and salt-dusted and my mouth is full of bitter dust. The snack is a fun notion that should have been consigned to the not-full-enough bin of cute ideas that didn’t quite work. It doesn’t help that the chips are $4.50 for four, and that they follow an uncertain welcome. A staff meeting overlapped our arrival for dinner, resulting in three hesitant approaches to our table from three different people. One, “The waiter will bring you your menus.” Two, “I’ll bring you your menus.” Three, “Here are your menus.” It’s not a huge deal – we got the much-mentioned menus and it didn’t even take too long – but hospitality is largely about creating a relaxing environment in which diners can enjoy. This was simply unsettling.
Morris Jones went on to do lots of things right and our meal was generally good. But this handsome old furniture warehouse is a tricky venue that grasps at many modes: there are two dining rooms, a bar, courtyard, pavement precinct and upstairs function zone, and being many things to many people makes it hard to have a consistent mission and tone. The customers are as varied as the interior. Some have heels higher than their skirts are long and a keen thirst for espresso martinis. Others pitch and keel at the bar, ham hock nuggets in hand, while sportsmen strive on the big screen. Meanwhile, diners sit demurely nearby, squeezing pipettes of citrus dressing over kingfish sashimi, sipping something crisp and European, and musing over the art displays. It’s not an easy mix to wrangle.
The restaurant has been here three years; chef and general manager Matthew Butcher joined the team 16 months ago. Just 29, Butcher worked his way from apprentice to chef de partie at Vue de Monde, spent a year at Singapore’s innovative Tippling Club, then toiled for four years under the Gordon Ramsay banner in Melbourne and Los Angeles. His varied experience accounts for some of the playful ideas but also for the rock-solid technical mastery and fine touch that underpins the best dishes. The duck is an example of excellent work with protein. The breast meat is tender (and looks like a bit of bird), the fat rendered and the skin delightfully crisp; it’s not easy to get that right. Different preparations of rhubarb (dried, caramelised, poached) attend the duck, along with potato puffs that are incredibly complicated to make and have a prawn-cracker texture without exactly paying off in flavour. The straightest dish on the menu – a rump cap with bonsai Yorkshire pudding and bold red wine sauce – is one of the most successful. The steak is deftly charred, extravagantly marbled and dripping with flavour.
Other dishes call for audience participation. Smoked kingfish sashimi is rolled in house-made gunpowder (yes, sulfur, potassium nitrate and charcoal – in this case, the ash from burnt leeks), arranged with avocado puree and the crunchy health-food combo of linseed, sunflower seeds and almonds, then served under a smoke-filled glass dome with add-your-own dressing. There’s also the ‘mad cow shot’, a DIY beef snack, comprising a spoon of tartare, a syringe of dashi broth and a tumbler of yuzu jelly. It’s amusing and tasty. Desserts are where the whimsy really pays off, especially with the nostalgic My Kinda Surprise, a cheffy riff on Butcher’s foil-wrapped childhood favourite. He grew up in a milk bar in western Victoria, surrounded by bubble gum and chocolate: this white chocolate sphere is melted tableside by a lurid blue syrup made from painstakingly evaporated Hubba Bubba to reveal a biscuity mass of chocolate, salted caramel, pop rocks and tonka bean. It’s both an on-trend sweet cacophony and an ode to the recent past.
Morris Jones does – or at least can – deliver good food, wine and service but it doesn’t quite feel coherent. It’s easier to make allowances for stumbles in a venue that patently just offers a feed and a brace of beers. Here though, the offering is ambitious, the prices are uppish, and with greater reach comes bigger tumbles. I admire the intention, and I’ll watch the progression with curiosity and hunger.
The lowdown
The best bit… Great meat-cooking skills
The worst bit… Chicken chips
Go-to dish… Kingfish sashimi with gunpowder ($21)
See their website.
First published in The Age, September 30, 2014.
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