Sharyn Cairns
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the opening of a new Andrew McConnell restaurant will raise the pulse of many Melburnians. Côte Basque − the first new restaurant from McConnell and his partner Jo McGann’s Trader House in Melbourne since Gimlet in 2020 − has added to the raised expectations by setting up shop in the iconic former Becco site. It’s enough to make even a serial restaurateur a little trepidatious.
Good news then that, even in the early weeks of Côte Basque, when everything is shiny-new, systems are being tweaked and the place is consistently packed, they’ve nailed the landing.
The room is gorgeous, not least because ACME (the design studio also responsible for Gimlet) has fully embraced the beauty of the site’s original 1950s features – the unique stepped layout, green terrazzo floor, angled steel-framed windows, cherrywood panelling – while adding new features, most notably the superb Magnus Reid mural in the bar area and a warm, earthy colour palette.
Côte Basque’s open kitchen, headed by chef Allan Doert Eccles, is primarily powered by wood and charcoal, which is where the Basque part comes in. McConnell is a fan of the simple grill restaurants in the Basque region in south-west France, and that influence is front and centre in many dishes.
Calamari à la brute − whole calamari grilled and served with creamy textured braised chickpeas and a fragrant rosemary and bay-leaf sauce made from squid ink and fish broth − presents as both simple and complex, while a powerful combo of txistorra (a Basque-style sausage) and octopus, both grilled, is a delightful salty-smoky flavour bomb.
Excellent snacks like anchovy matrimony (a combo of boquerones, salted anchovies and cultured butter on toasted sourdough), and a knee-weakeningly good riff on a Gilda, featuring blue eye trevalla crudo sauced with white onion, guindilla peppers and green olives, similarly nod to the Basque theme.
Elsewhere on the two-page menu – one side a regularly changing range of seafood and beef given the grill treatment, the other a list of dishes that nod more generally to France and Spain – the approach is less regionally specific. A perfectly rosy-pink roast duck, teamed with a sauce made with Madeira-soaked prunes, a two-bite blue swimmer crab tart in a buckwheat shell, a dessert of blood orange and olive oil glacé alongside a geographically democratic wine list, underline the fact that Basque is more guide than blueprint here.
Côte Basque has navigated the initial tightrope walk of raised expectations superbly. Better, it is a good time eating here with the feel of a place with rock solid foundations, one that will age brilliantly into the future.
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