The Gordon Ramsay deal is still in it’s early days. At least that’s the Crown Casino corporate line. For the moment Bistro Guillaume is the final jewel in the crown up with (in reverse order of opening) Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons, Nobu and Rockpool Bar and Grill.
Inevitably Ramsay stomping into Melbourne means that somebody, probably another restaurant, has to be kicked out of Crown to make way. Now there are two French places only separated only by Nobu and the difference between a brasserie (by Philippe Mouchel), a bistro and the prices charged.
I wonder where that leaves Phillippe Mouchel a disciple of Paul Bocuse?
On the ‘phone last week Crown’s official spokesman last week wouldn’t be drawn.
But enough speculation. This is about Guillaume Brahimi, from the Joel Robuchon corner, and his new bistro which is considerably posher than it’s name suggests.

If you don’t know Brahimi you should. Le coq sportif, rugby mainly, I think I first ate his food at Quay in Sydney. I was with a couple of feminists from Saatchi and Saatchi and we “had to eat” the Joel Robuchon mashed potato, my first attempt in Australia, an exercise as much about carbs as butter.
Guillaume at Bennelong, his Sydney restaurant, is inside the most famous Australian icon of them all, the Opera House. And despite the location and the view, the food is exceptional, as are the prices.
Back in Melbourne, the new restaurant, Bistro Guillaume is beautiful. It looks French, Parisian, and at night with my glasses off I could even imagine the the little brown creek known as the Yarra to be the Seine. Well, that may be pushing it a bit but I could have been in France.
The detail in the finishes at Guillaume is extraordinary, everything including the marble being proper and solid. The floors are wooden of the French herringbone design. Dividing the main diner are a curious and elegant marble and wood bar supporting a lamp with old-fashioned woven style wiring in red. The ceiling lights are shading by these wonderful puff ball style pantaloons.

I like it a lot. But as Jak, who some readers will be relieved doesn’t have the salty language of my other dining partner, keeps reminding me, the prices are restaurant rather than bistro. The Herald Sun tells us Guillaume has invested $250,000 of his own money in wine (one bottle worth near $9,000) and another $140,000 on chairs.
And the food and wine?
French classics and I love them. Coming from the UK, my holidays were spent in France or I travelled there for business or love - Paris (she was in Montparnasse), Brittany, Normandy, Loire Valley, once tortured by Catholic monks somewhere south of Orleans (education my parents thought) and later the south (work) and the Savoie (for the pleasure of ski-ing to a good meal).
The point is French food is probably my biggest cultural food reference point. While my mates were at the soccer, I was hanging out at Le Gavroche, Le Boulestin, L’Escargot, La Tante Claire and several dozen other French restaurants.

So I couldn’t resist the Hunter Valley snails at $21 for six. On an elegant frosted platter they were tender with beurre persillé - parsley butter. Jak went for the plate of Guillaume’s crudités. Lesser restaurants often present a plate of raw vegetables with a couple of dips. Here classics are elegantly crafted. A balanced celeriac rémoulade sits firmly on a slice of toast. Sauce Gribiche sits atop tender young leeks. Properly ripe tomato slices sit a top similarly ripe slice of avocado. And finally a few baby herbs are tangled with chunks of beetroot, croutons and goat’s curd.
I am boring perhaps but I went for the steak frites with a béarnaise at $35. It was just what I expected and cooked perfectly.
Jak chose what must be the most expensive fish and chips in Melbourne at $45, a sculptural whole deboned whiting supported by a thick scaffold of pommes Pont-Neuf, basically railway sleeper like chips cooked in goose fat.
Although I love string-like fries I wouldn’t have minded some of these with my steak, tasting of real fresh spuds. This is a rarity nowadays although I do wonder if they could have been a little more crisp.
Finally there was a thick slice of lemon tart. The balance of sweet and citrus as it should and the pastry properly cooked, brown and toasty to taste. I defy you to find a better example in Melbourne.
We drank wines by the glass and I didn’t skimp on cost although two champagnes were complimentary after we pointed out they weren’t on the bill. Guillaume, who was chatting with Neil Perry on this first night, offered us another glass and an Armanac after we’d paid and it seemed impolite to refuse. To make up for it we left a hefty tip.

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There are no sharks in bondage kit. But there is something very Damien Hirst about the salumi (that’s Italian for cured meat) counter. It’s about chopped-up (and cured) bits of animal in a display case. Perhaps it is the backdrop of the curtain drawn across one of the five tiled dining areas in Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons that makes it look that way.

The last time I saw something similar was a cow at the now closed Saatchi Gallery on London’s Southbank. And there was the display case chic at Quo Vadis, a short lived Hirst partnership with Marco Pierre White.

If you haven’t heard about this joint you should. It’s from the Maurice Terzini camp, he who started Caffé e Cucina before moving on to (not neccessarily in correct order), Il Bacaro, Melbourne Wine Room, Otto, Icebergs and that other little tratt in Bondi.

Chef Robert Marchetti is having the salumi cured to his specifications in Lismore in northern New South Wales. It is very good and very tasty. For $12 you get five of the thinnest slices of prosciutto cut on the special hand operated slicer, one that transports the meat across the blade rather than the other way around.

We arrived at around 11.30pm and the kitchen was not serving from the main menu. At one point it looked like we were to be turned away but manager Ari Vlassopoulos, who I met when I scoped out the restaurant pre-opening, recognised me.

What we could order was hardly slumming it. Baccala Fritto - salt cod balls, crab sandwiches (too rich for the Martini Monster who has a flabby pancreas), three year old Rocco Reggiano.
What I really like is the wines served by the carafe from $16 to $22 for a half litre which is brilliant at a time when it is difficult to find anything to drink at under $40 in other joints of this quality.

There are no tablecloths and the knives, forks and condements are stacked in stainless steel bins on the tables.

The room itself is divided into five, each faced with a slightly different hand-made tile of Sicily. Outside the same effect is used for a long narrow smoking area which has the feel of a Neopolitan bus station. What the Roman designers, Lazzarini Pickering Architetti, have done is clever. I didn’t think they would pull it off with the tiles without making it look like the inside of a men’s lavatory. But they did.

At this point the Martini Monster launches into Entourage. Our Ari (I think) is in earshot as she discusses the other Ari (played by Jeremy Piven), the usual expletives and specifically cunt (I can’t believe I didn’t ** that out) muscle. I’m not sure we got away with it.

But it probably doesn’t matter because with it’s hard edges I’d imagine nobody would be able to hear us on a normal night.

I’m not a natural fan of the casino, but the presence of its new batch of high end restaurants including Rockpool and Nobu is growing on me. I like Terzini’s new millenium Roman tratt. And I like the styling of the waiters in their white coats (apart from mangement who wear black) and Converse trainers.

And I guess like with Damien Hirst styling is the key word. This is a designer place that sits on the reputation of Terzini. For now the prices look like excellent value with pasta dishes in the low $20 range. I want to go back for more but the fact that you can’t book a table may stop me. But I’ll try while the prices stay low.

For tomorrow though I have a table booked at Bistro Guillaume. Sure, I try and live on the edge with the Martini Monster. But I do like some certainty.

Food Fascist

Coming soon: Food & Wine Daily - a site in development. Let me know what you think.

Already here: Very Cheap Eats. Let me know if you’d like to join.

Jack beat me to blog GAS.

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Worth it: the $15 wagyu burger.

Now that’s what I call a burger. A Wagyu burger to be precise from Rockpool Bar & Grill at Crown Casino in Melbourne. The bun was more like a brioche in texture. The whole construction is designed to be eaten rather than slip out down my front. There was a thin slice of cheese inside but the real star is the meat, prime wagyu spiked with what can only be wagyu fat packed with all those greate omega 3 oils..

Fat as we all know is the solution that transfers the flavour from the meat to the palate. And boy what flavour that was, the unmistakable flavour of wagyu, creamy, meaty, mouth melting… I whimpered.

At $15 it is an absolute bargain and worth a visit to the the bar or wine bar section (you can’t buy the burger in the restaurant) alone. To even mention any burger joint in the same blog post of this masterpiece would be sacrilege. But hey, I sold my soul to the devil years ago; the burgers from Grill’d are shit in comparison (probably because they are healthy burgers) despite being half the price.

We arrived at Rockpool at 10.45 at night after a very poor and longwinded staging of Othello and this burger uplifted my whole evening.

Of course, by the time we’d ordered chips and three glasses of red the bill was $71 for about 45 minutes time in the restaurant. For burgers alone that’s about 66 cents a minute but with chips and wine that’s $1.57. Considering I had to wait five minutes in line in McDonald’s last week simply to buy a $4 and quite nasty takeaway to deliver to a very hungover friend (seriously it wasn’t me or Jak) the Rockpool burger is great value.

Last night was my second visit to Rockpool. I’d resisted for six months purely because of my own prejudices about casino eating. How wrong I was.

All is calm but busy in the open kitchen.

Inside the restaurant: some of the customers who know how to hold their cutlery.

It has a great cosmopolitan feel like something from New York. Or on more familar territory from Conran in London. The service was friendly on my first visit, if not a little overstretched at some points.

The seafood here is fresh out of the acquarium. At first I was shocked at how quickly the live scallops arrived all the way from the Melbourne Acquarium on the other side of the Yarra. How many divers did the restaurant employ I asked. Was there any chance you’d get some of the giant squid once it thaws out?

But no, Rockpool has it’s own acquarium. Although the scallops were described as live they were very docile. I was worried they may hop onto the carpet which is awful because these shell fish really pick up the hairs.

Live, possibly dying or already dead scallops.

Next we each had steak tartare. Although spicy and tasty, it was of the ugly variety, the size of a small liquidized rodent nestling in a lettuce leaf (which is a lot better than France-Soir where it is the size of a domestic cat nestling in something near the size of a whole lettuce).

Steak tartare – tasty but of the ugly variety

To be quite honest I’ve only popped in for two quick meals and haven’t gone for the full blown experience but from what I’ve experienced and tasted so far I like Rockpool very much. It is a very different experience to my last pre-blogging visit to its Sydney sister I really did feel like I’d been treated like shit.

Finally it is time for the bill. Simon our sommelier who took us towards some excellent wines takes my card. And I am recognised. I’m not recognised for my column on the Herald Sun, for writing in The Australian or any of the reviewing I’ve done for restaurant guides.

I’m recognised for my blog. It turns out his girlfriend is Jackie from Eating with Jack who also works in hospitality.

One month from my second blog anniversary I now reflect how blogging has evolved in Melbourne, to the point that bloggers are recognised, regularly reviewing and discovering new restaurants before the main media. Many restaurants such as Interlude and Fenix are even courting bloggers. But as I often say that’s another story and coming soon.

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