A slick bistro (from young guns) opens in a cute West End shop
They’ve worked at Gerard’s, Essa, Pilloni and Bar Romantica. Now they’re out on their own with eye-catching, produce-driven food and a killer globe-trotting wine list.
A dining room. Some chairs. Art on the walls.
Phil Poussart and Lachlan Matheson’s concept for the fit-out of their first restaurant, Gum Bistro, doesn’t sound like much. But keep it uncomplicated, they say, to better focus on the food and wine.
“In terms of the tone, we were looking at a lot of London joints,” Poussart says. “Leo’s, Cadet, Noble Rot, those kinds of places. You might be serving some beige-looking quail with some beige sauce, but the wine list is out of control and that plate of beige quail is going to taste amazing, even if the technique isn’t super obvious.”
It’s a confident approach, but sommelier Poussart and chef Matheson, for a relatively young pair, have some eye-catching runs on the board. Poussart has worked at Essa, Pilloni and Hobart’s Fico, among many others; Matheson has cooked at Gerard’s under Ben Williamson, the much-loved (but now closed) Bright in London, and Melbourne’s Bar Romantica.
In short, they’ve got this.
Gum opened this month in the Boundary Street premises previously occupied by Pasta Club. The bones of the charming old timber shop – which has also done time as an art gallery and a newsagent – remain much the same (including the charmingly wonky floor at the back of the restaurant), but Poussart and Matheson have given the dining room a fresh coat of white paint, lending it a brighter and more airy feel. They also enlisted the help of Poussart’s father – a carpenter in a previous career – to build a timber banquette and some new table tops.
Otherwise, they’ve kept Pasta Club’s chairs. There is, indeed, art on the walls. They’ve hit their own brief.
Matheson is cooking a tight, seasonal menu of local produce designed to be shared. Smaller plates include a duck liver parfait with native tamarind jelly; fried The Falls Farm eggplant with tomato, shallot and herbs; pipis with oyster mushrooms, young ginger and basil; and a sweetcorn agnolotti with parmigiana cream.
For larger plates, there’s cabbage-wrapped cobia with zucchini and creme fraiche; an autumn vegetable pot pie with caramelised onion and gruyere; and quail served with king and oyster mushrooms.
Poussart and Matheson, like so many modern restaurateurs, talk about produce being key, but drive it home at Gum by having some of their key suppliers listed on the menu’s front page: The Falls Farm, Urban Valley Mushrooms, Rocky Point Aquaculture, to name a few.
For wines, there’s a 60-bottle list that’s designed to be approachable, with most drops going for less than $120 a bottle. There’s no particular angle except to present what Poussart finds interesting, so expect local wines lined up against labels from France, Sicily, Slovenia and the US. There’s also a reserve list for bottles the restaurant has acquired from more limited supplier allocations.
Other drinks include a short cocktail and beer list.
“For Gum, we were initially thinking of something more refined,” Poussart says. “But it slowly made sense to make it more casual.
“That’s what I’ve missed in Brisbane [since returning from Hobart], I think: here is a place you can stop in. You don’t have to go for a date night, or an anniversary; you can pop in a couple of nights a week for a snack and a glass of wine.”
“A lot of places do one thing – either the food well, or the wine – well,” Matheson adds. “We’re trying to hit that sweet spot in-between.”
Open Tue-Sat 5pm-10pm
237 Boundary Street, West End, 0467 060 560
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.