Review: Lesa is new sister restaurant to hit CBD wine bar Embla

THERE’S a new contender for Melbourne’s best bread — and it’s just one of the sibling rivalries found at Lesa, the new restaurant above Embla. But has the CBD newcomer hit its stride yet, asks Dan Stock.

I CAN only imagine the pressure. Sure, creating the sequel to a runaway hit restaurant would be a challenge, but I’m talking about the pressure to create the follow up to the bread served at Embla.

For as anyone who’s eaten at the fire-powered CBD wine bar over the past three years knows, Embla serves the city’s best bread – all wood oven-fired caramelised crust with spongy, bouncy inner served with whipped butter tickled with smoke.

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The dining room opposite the kitchen is the pick of the two spaces at Lesa. Picture: Kristoffer Paulsen

But chef Dave Verheul evidently thrives under pressure. Upstairs, in the long-time-in-the-making addition to Embla, he’s serving fermented potato flatbread – chary, warm and pliable with a hint of tang in the chew – that’s served with a pond of macadamia to which a slick of shiitake oil provides meaty mushroomy yin to the creamy nutty yang.

It’ll cost you $8, but it’s reason alone to head up the stairs.

Lesa is the third restaurant from Kiwi expats Christian McCabe and Verheul, who first wowed Carlton five years ago with The Town Mouse, went on to set the CBD on fire with Embla and who always planned the upstairs space to be a more formal restaurant to Embla’s wine bar drop-in casualness.

Embla, though, proved to be more of a hit than they ever imagined; getting a power upgrade to run a second kitchen a more tortuous process than they counted on.

But how to follow that success — in the same building, no less?

It’s a tale of two rooms. Turn right at the top of the stairs and you have a dark, timbered room where twos and threes are seated, which feels like an anteroom to nowhere particularly joyful. Turn left and you’ll have a glamorously upholstered high-backed seat to the open-kitchen decked out in shimmering emerald tiles. It’s definitely the pick of the two.

Over Lesa’s long gestation, Dave’s been busy pickling and fermenting all manner of ingredients you’re unlikely to see elsewhere – there’s hazelnut miso and lacto-fermented green almonds and pear leaf oil, and that’s just on one dish.

Raw flounder with hazelnut and green almond at Lesa

This is more cerebral, less approachable fare more in keeping with Christian McCabe’s championing of boundary-pushing winemakers who dance to the beat of their own drops. The extensive list here is created with thinking drinking in mind. That there’s a page titled “A few good wines under $100” gives you an idea of average spend (though mark ups seem pretty fair). With such a focus, that wines by the glass — $14-$22 – are not poured at the table is just lazy.

There are three options across each of the four courses for you to eat to yourself ($85), one of the subtle demarcations with downstairs - there’s also the choice of a six-course tasting menu for $120.

That hazelnut miso adds nutty depth to a fine dice of raw flounder, the fatty fish dressed with the bright pear leaf oil but there’s a discordant blue cheesiness to the dish that’s odd and unpleasant.

Veal tartare hidden under braised saltbush is more traditional than other dishes on the menu.

Veal tartare, with braised saltbush leaves, is more traditional, the sweetness of the excellent meat tempered with tomatoes smoked and dried at the end of summer.

An early, if unlikely, hit is the “chicken porridge”, where poached, shredded chicken is the aromatic protein to oats cooked in almond milk, deeply rich black chestnut shaved over the top like truffles. It’s at once comforting and quietly luxe, though the arrow squid fresh from Lakes Entrance, finely shaved into ribbons and quickly poached in clam stock until just set, is equally elegant. With first-season broad beans blitzed with braised curly parsley that sings of the ocean, and a crunchy pistachio base, it’s a lovely dish.

Chicken porridge is an early - unlikely - hit dish on Dave Verheul’s menu

Main/third courses are more in keeping with Embla’s simply treated elegance – a kurobuta pork loin gently cooked sunburn pink is allowed to shine next to a crisp-fried kale leaf, while slightly translucent tiles of hapuku with English spinach and a beurre blanc made from fermented fennel juice is a modern take on a classic fish dish combo.

Fermented nectaries with a bright tingling fizz served with elderflower ice cream is the pick of desserts that also include a salted bergamot parfait with nashi pear that had an odd bath-bomb perfume.

A list made with thinking drinking in mind is a feature.

Of course Lesa is good. Nothing these two have done has been anything less, from Matterhorn days in Wellington on.

But it’s not great. Not yet, at least. Right now Lesa feels like a restaurant in search of a reason. In the shadow of its wildly successful, overachieving sibling, it’s yet to find its place in the world. I reckon it’s three menu changes and six months from hitting its stride, working out exactly what it is and who it is for.

Because at the moment Lesa, despite every intention of the team, is Embla upstairs, just not as enjoyable.

LESA

Upstairs, 122 Russell St, City

lesarestaurant.com.au

Ph: 9935 9838

Open: Wed-Sat from 5.30; Thur-Fri from noon

Score: 14/20