Crofter in Brunswick East shows conscious consumption comes at a cost
George Calombaris’s rebooted Hellenic Republic in Brunswick is trying hard with its Eton Mess pav roll, tomatoes with vegemite dressing and summer beans with XO. But it doesn’t quite convert to a coherent meal you want to eat.
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Zucchinis with parmesan clotted cream. Tomatoes with Vegemite dressing. Summer beans with XO, devilled chook on toast and Eton Mess pav roll.
It all sounds so bloody delicious, doesn’t it?
Matt Wilkinson sure knows how to write a menu that jumps off the page.
Some will recall Wilkinson from his time at fine diner Circa in St Kilda, though more will likely remember him for the stonkingly good sangas, modern-day Chicken Kiev and CWA cakes at Pope Joan, or for having whipped up dinner thanks to one of his Mr Wilkinson’s… cookbooks.
The Yorkshire-born, Melbourne-based chef has made big-flavoured comfort food his calling card, developing and honing a veg-first focus long before that bandwagon rolled into town.
And at Crofter, he’s taking that plant pledge further and making “flora” the main attraction by elegantly inverting the meat and three veg Anglo plate of yesterday into a three veg and meat meal of today.
Named after a small agricultural landholding found throughout Scotland, Crofter marks a return to the northern suburbs for Wilkinson who shuttered Pope Joan down the road in 2018 (it’s now in the CBD under the stewardship of restaurateur David Mackintosh). Now in partnership with MAdE Establishment, he’s taken over what was George Calombaris’s original Hellenic Republic site in Brunswick East.
Not that it looks much different to the untrained eye, save a new front bar area and some artful botanical touches – the tightly packed tables and sit-up-straight chairs designed to get bums off seats in 90-minute windows that Hellenic needed in its heyday remain – and it’s still very loud when in full flight.
There’s evidently much goodwill for Wilkinson to make a good go of it here. A week in and it seems many mates have dropped by for a bite and to wish him well, with the rest a mix of the young families and Tindering professionals that call this gentrified swath of the inner-north home.
Though I’m not sure just how much neighbourly cheer will be left once they realise they’re being stung $15 for some bread and butter.
Sure, it’s billed as the very delicious-sounding “house-made pickle bread” that comes flecked with fennel/caraway seeds, but at $8 the single tennis ball-sized roll, served as is and cool, would be steep even if it actually tasted of pickle. It’s another $7 for the “butter dip”, a whipped béarnaise-like concoction that’s certainly decadent and moreish but pointless without attendant carbs. It’s a similar scenario should you go with the garlic naan ($8) and spiced dahl dip ($7).
While most things on the menu hover around $15 with nowt but two bigger dishes – curried mussels and a whole lamb shoulder – breaking $20, the bill quickly adds up for these small plates sure do live up to their name.
Yes, they are amazing, bursting with sunshine warmth, the flesh juicy and sweet with a tickle of acidity, but $18 for a couple of chopped tomatoes will have the room’s ghosts of Greece turning white, the alluring-sounding Vegemite dressing tasting mostly of vinegar, charcoal dust adding little other than unnecessary grit.
Char-branded slices of zucchini are better, the summer hero served tastily with a chunky salsa verde and a pond of liquefied salty parmesan cream ($12), while vibrantly green crunchy beans come tossed through a vegan mushroom XO sauce that lacks the power and heft of properly funky fish ($16).
The devilled chook, however, shows the type of all-of-beast clever thinking and knockout tastiness with which Wilkinson made his name. Spicy nuggets of saucy offal (heart and liver) top-and-tail a thick slice of toasted bread with fluffy, anchovy-draped egg. At once creamy and sharp, spicy and salty, it’s a winner ($16).
Terrifically tender tiles of cuttlefish and chunks of octopus come hidden under an airy potato foam for a welcome twist on this famous combo ($19), and though the sentiment is good in using a “retired dairy cow” in the kofta, the grilled finger of dense, chewy meat needed more fat to hit its message home ($15).
Obviously not a vegetarian restaurant, then, but it is obviously Wilkinson’s, with a melange of 90s pop on the stereo and nods to Britain (chipper gravy sauce with potato gems; bubble and squeak omelette) and his family, though I don’t think “nan’s overcooked greens” translate from his childhood table to this one, the chilli-tomato sodden leaves unsaved by a macadamia crumb atop ($14).
A bowl of a dozen plump mussels are swimming in a pumpkin soup-like curry sauce, little potato gems scattered throughout would add welcome crunch had they not drowned first. It’s $35.
The tight, forward-looking wine list is filled with field blends and fair mark ups, off-centre varietals and regions, and while service could be snappier – I spent a fair bit of the night trying to make eye contact to keep the meal moving along – it’s warm and friendly.
I heartily applaud reinventing what dinner looks like when created with more mindful consumption in mind, but though it promises much Crofter struggles to convert that vision, this procession of plates failing to coalesce into a coherent meal.
There’s nothing terribly wrong with anything, but nothing particularly memorable, either.
Apart from a knockout finale, that is.
Eton Mess in pav roll form ($15), luxuriously soft cream dotted with silken macerated strawberries lifted by a lightly fragrant basil ice cream – it definitely tastes as good as it sounds.
CALOMBARIS’S ARGENTINIAN RESTAURANT REBOOT
HOW TO MAKE THE ULTIMATE FISH AND CHIPS
HOW THIS RESTAURANT IS REDUCING WASTE
CROFTER
434 Lygon St, Brunswick East
Tues-Fri from 5.30-pm; Sat-Sun from 11.30am (Sun lunch only)
crofter.com.au
Go-to dish: Eton Mess pav roll
Score: 13 /20