Brisbane’s new suburban go-to with BYO
What’s it take to make a great neighbourhood restaurant? We investigate a newcomer to see if it’s up to scratch.
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I am at a crossroads. I know, who isn’t these days? But right now I’m seated beside an actual road junction, at a stone table set amid an attractive flourish of tropical greenery just off the footpath.
This nook outside the premises’ glass front walls has the benefits of privacy, admirable social distance and a wonderful quirkiness. Also, it’s informative. Without sitting there reading the electronic road sign flashing above the city-bound traffic I would have no idea that the Victoria Bridge is now permanently closed.
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We’re at Le Coin, a new restaurant in Red Hill in Brisbane’s inner-west that takes its name, not from the need to BYO cash because the eftpos machine is down as it was on our visit, but the French word for corner.
On the site occupied most recently by Plum Tucker, where Waterworks Rd and Enoggera Terrace meet, Le Coin is a new sibling to Auchenflower’s Haig Road Bistro, which has over the past couple of years established a neighbourhood foothold with its casual ambience, BYO nights and low-key, accessible version of French bistro food.
Le Coin opened at the end of last year with an attractive, refreshed fit-out, and a similar menu and format to Haig Road, with two courses for $58 or three courses for $72. But at Red Hill there’s also breakfast and lunch. Breakfast could be omelettes, croque monsieurs and madames or brioche French toast. Lunch might be escargot, terrines, salad niçoise or most of the same main courses as the dinner menu, including gnocchi with mushrooms, a changing cut of beef with shoestring fries or spatchcock.
The drinks list kicks off with an array of gin and house cocktails and beers including the French Kronenbourg. Perrier-Jouet champagnes feature (the NV brut by the glass is $19) with many of the mainly French wines available in 150, 250 and 500ml pours.
Tarte flambe, often billed as France’s version of the pizza, is very thin, crisp, unleavened pastry, and ours, chosen from a lineup of six, is topped simply with rocket and cured salmon, red onion and capers ($19.50), which is for us an attractive shared starter but it would also be an excellent light lunch.
Twice-baked goat’s cheese souffle, in a creamy sauce and perked up with a scatter of walnut praline, is a generously portioned entree, as is the main course of oven-roasted duck, the meat a little overcooked but with the skin gloriously crisp, atop a nest of braised red cabbage enlivened with a few twists of spaetzle (a German noodle), cranberries and deeply flavoured port wine jus.
Barramundi, baked in paper atop potatoes and vegetables including artichokes, is fine if all rather soft and texturally unchallenging.
Crepes, coffee crème brulee and a chocolate parfait are the dessert options. The parfait is a disappointment, the disc of chocolate pudding shattering on contact with a spoon, leaving the cream, hazelnut praline and raspberry little in the way of main event to work with.
Service is cordial and professional despite staff having to traipse out the front to our table.
Le Coin is the kind of establishment that’s a bonus in any neighbourhood, where it’s fine to stop by for coffee and a croissant, a glass of wine and a snack before visiting Red Hill Cinema across the road, or the full dining experience.
The relaxed tone is enhanced by BYO being welcomed on Wednesday and Thursday nights (corkage $15 per bottle), part of a recipe that embeds an establishment as a suburban go-to.
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