Credit: Kristoffer Paulsen)
The rise of micro-restaurants on the Australian dining scene is a subject that deserves its own essay, but for a snapshot of how excellent eating in these tiny restaurants can be, Greasy Zoe’s – opened in 2017 as an early Melbourne adopter of the genre – is a great place to start.
While there’s no official definition of what a micro-restaurant is, Greasy Zoe’s is a comprehensive draft. There are only eight seats in the compact ’70s-channelling raw brick, tiled-floored and timber detailed shopfront in Hurstbridge, on Melbourne’s bushy outskirts, and just two people working, Zoe Birch in the kitchen and her partner Lachlan Gardner looking after the floor.
They’re only open four services a week too, which can make securing a reservation devilishly difficult, another classic of the micro-restaurant genre. It’s well worth the effort. Birch is an excellent chef and one who, on her 10-ish course, daily-changing dégustation menus is hyper vigilant about the local and the sustainable. In lesser hands this can mean worthy but dull, but the food here is as focused on deliciousness as it is philosophy.
Take the moist, chewy, two-bite spelt crumpet topped with Warrigal greens, golden zucchini, and almond and basil “pesto”, accompanied by a halved Tommy Toe tomato that’s turbo charged with a tangy sprinkling of dehydrated and crushed tomato seeds. Or a chawanmushi-like duck egg custard that is flavoured with seaweed from the Mornington Peninsula and given texture via dehydrated fish skin. Or a sliver of superb, quickly-grilled wallaby served with an onion and mustard sauce and accompanied by a menu highlight, a sweet and salty tarte Tatin made with glistening tropia onions.
A cheese course lands as a pinwheel-shaped croissant, filled with a house-made lactic cheese, tiny pieces of fresh fig and extra flavour bursts from cubes of fig jelly. A doughnut made from native grass seed flour comes topped with macadamia purée and citrusy Murray Cod roe. House made bread is served with butter made with kefir culture and red lentil miso with an earthy brassica salt on the side. So many delightful small details.
Lachlan Gardner, a charming presence on the floor, is responsible for the wine list that skews local (a pet blanc chardonnay from Punch in the Yarra Valley) but is unafraid to venture further afield (a 2020 aligoté from Pierre Boisson) and emphasises both easy but always interesting drinking. Greasy Zoe’s is a bespoke, focused and niche experience but it’s a rustic, admirably relaxed and enjoyable one too. If this is what defines a micro restaurant then more please.
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