Elliott’s, Balmain is a leafy bar and restaurant made for long lunches and sundowners

Modern Australian$$$

Thank goodness, it’s gone. “The croissant has gone!” I yelled to my wife from two rooms away the other week. “We can go to Elliott’s!” She had no idea what I was talking about.

You see, I really wanted to like Elliott’s in Balmain, a self-described modern Australian bistro that opened a few blocks from my house last year. Nice bloke Michael Fegent (who also runs the impressive Mexican restaurant Esteban in the CBD) spent a motza renovating the former Efendy site, adding a retractable roof, courtyard firepits and the kind of modernist lines and artworks found in Palm Springs pool clubs.

The cocktail list is one of the best on the peninsula, and recent government “vibrancy reforms” meant there could – and would – be live music outdoors. I just couldn’t support somewhere that thought it was perfectly reasonable to serve a cheeseburger on a “croissant bun”.

One day, it’s cheeseburger croissants – then, all of a sudden, we’re putting butter chicken on pizzas, spooning caviar on Latina Fresh, turning instant noodles into ice blocks. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. It seems I wasn’t the only local unconvinced by the merits of a burger made on laminated dough, and Elliott’s relaunched with a new chef in July.

Brad Crowle leads the kitchen after a head role at one-hatted Kiln in Surry Hills, and he brings a good deal of open-fire cooking skill to Balmain. The new menu is built around a charcoal barbecue installed when Fegent opened short-lived Argentinian restaurant Casa Esquina at the site in 2024.

This means a few nicely grilled steaks from top-drawer farmers, starting at $49 for a wagyu flank; pork scotch fillet boosted by a booming smoked hock sauce; bronzed and butterflied chicken underlined by the sea-breeze flavour of karkalla. There’s a cheeseburger, but it’s on a standard-issue bun, and hits all the juicy, beefy notes it needs to.

Smaller dishes run from oysters with desert-lime dressing (a bargain for $3 at happy hour with an $8 “mini” martini that feels like the size of some full serves in the city) to cauliflower, gruyere and cheddar croquettes, to barbecued king prawns sprawling over a bisque built on prawn heads. It’s by no means a bad bisque, but I was hoping for more depth and funk.

A great bisque asks for more hard-crusted sourdough to soak up every rust-orange drop. This is not that bisque, at least not when I tried it in July.

A verdant parsley veloute brightened with makrut lime is terrific, though, as is the fillet of Murray cod the sauce bolsters. Extra-crisp skin, giving flesh: tick, boom. Meanwhile, there are plenty of smart wine choices on the drinks list if you’re just looking for somewhere to sink a chenin blanc beneath camphor laurels.

I didn’t get the impression there was anyone on deck to chat through the benefits of, say, dropping $210 on a Cobaw Ridge 2024 Chardonnay instead of the $170 Pierrick Laroche 2023 Chablis, but the young floor team is, otherwise, on the ball and eager to please. Third time’s a charm for a courtyard and dining room that are too attractive to remain empty.

The low-down

Atmosphere: Leafy bar and restaurant for long lunches and sundowners Go-to dishes: Murray cod with parsley veloute ($64); cheeseburger with pickles and chips ($30); 800g Brooklyn Valley T-bone ($160); chocolate, coffee and hazelnut slice ($22)

Drinks: Australian and Old World bottles across a wide variety of styles and price points, going well into the triple digits; strong cocktail service and Grifter on tap Cost: About $220 for two, excluding drinks

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

Previously

• Review

Opposite the Tote, Mary’s sits on a memory-making corner for many Melburnians.

Its friendly staff are ready to guide you as you try some taste sensations.