Curly Whiskers in Brighton serves Melbourne’s best onion soup

It sounds like a recipe for disaster: French food cooked by a Dutch backpacker in a restaurant run by a couple with no hospitality background. But Curly Whiskers is instead a dining dream, writes Dan Stock.

Best in class: the French onion soup at Curly Whiskers is worth travelling for. Picture: Nicole Cleary

“If you only go to one museum in Paris, make it this one,” said my Parisian expat friend who has the unerring ability to sniff out the weird and wonderful in whichever city she currently calls home.

Thus on the last night in the City of Light, I recently found myself in the Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature — the museum of hunting and nature.

An astonishing collection dedicated to man and beast housed within an 18th century mansion, it’s is like a multi-room wunderkammer, a feast of objects both practical and ornamental filling every available space.

But what makes the experience so skin-tinglingly compelling is that these carefully curated artefacts — the huge collection of taxidermy; displays of ancient, ornate rifles and other related ephemera; the paintings and huge tapestries depicting hunts of yore — are juxtaposed with contemporary art, the space variously given over to an artist to create a wild, immersive experience that is unlike anything else around.

Sublime: Hervey Bay scallops with beetroot and champagne sauce.

It’s utterly, enchantingly bonkers; a highlight of this trip that was made even more memorable by the final meal that followed in an Airbnb host-recommended bistro around the corner.

With a belly full of entrecote and frites, Cotes du Rhone and Paris-Brest it was, just as Lou Reed drawls, such a perfect day.

The joy of travel is that such happy eat-see-and-do memories become conflated but the joy of returning home is that we eat as well, often better, in our own little French bistros.

And the steak served at Curly Whiskers was as good as any you’d be served in Paris, thanks mainly to the produce we often take for granted.

In this instance, it’s an eye fillet of Cape Grim beef that proves the clincher and while I silently questioned the butter knife set, I needn’t have worried, for it parted the steak as if wielded by Moses. Crunchy little potatoes roasted in duck fat and a perfectly dressed salad with a few goji berries thrown in for good measure and you have a plate that’s spot on ($42).

On fire: chef Silas Orre with crepes suzette.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster: French food cooked by a Dutch backpacker in a restaurant run by a couple with no hospitality background save a love of good produce. But Curly Whiskers is, instead, one of Melbourne’s quietly lovely dining experiences.

What started out as a gourmet creperie up the Gardenvale-end of Brighton run by the wife-and-husband team of Rosalind and Oliver Virnik has, over the past 18 months, been operating as a French bistro, with Silas Orre now in the open kitchen (and in partnership with the Virniks).

My word, can he cook.

His onion soup, for instance, is quite possibly the best in the city — it’s certainly the best I’ve tried.

A lighter, more ethereal version than the deep, dark and powerfully rich soups you find elsewhere, it’s a masterful broth that’s delicate and bright with the lovely herbal lilt of thyme elevating the onion’s sweetness.

With a wodge of crusty bread thickly topped with stringy melted gruyere, it is a hands-down winter winner ($18).

Winter winner: the confit duck cassoulet is a comforting hug of a dish.

The understated, austere space is, in winter at least, candlelit dark with the unique, fully open kitchen the focus of the room. It really is like eating in someone’s house.

And just as you might at home, I can thoroughly recommend picking up the Milawa duck leg and gnawing it clean.

For tonight the “canard du jour” comes in confit cassoulet form and is another smashingly enjoyable plate. The rich stickiness of the braised butter beans, the tender yet satisfyingly chewy meat, the gloriously rendered crisp, golden skin — it’s the type of dish to get stuck into with a grin ($42).

Earlier, three perfectly cooked Harvey Bay scallops — pan-seared and translucent, buttery and wobbly beauties — are served on the shell with a pretty-as-you-like champagne sauce coloured pink with beetroot ($24), while to finish, Rosalin returns to the pans to turn out an enjoyable — though at $20, expensive — rendition of the 70s dinner party classic, crepes suzette.

Home style: Curly Whiskers is like dining in someone’s kitchen. Pictures: Nicole Cleary

Owner Rosalin Virnik at her humble local French restaurant in Brighton.

So far, so very, very good. But if you want to keep the dream alive, better come on BYO Wednesdays, for the rudimentary wine list lets the package down with a thud.

A $15 glass of flabby Chablis a disappointing start, a $10 Languedoc pinot to follow was flat and forgettable and offering a Heathcote shiraz on a list with just six other wines (all French) is simply odd.

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But that’s easily fixed. Curly Whiskers is otherwise full of low-key, honest charms and home to some supremely enjoyable cooking.

If you only go to one restaurant this Bastille Day …

CURLY WHISKERS

Score: 13.5/20

124 Martin St, Brighton

curlywhiskers.com.au

Ph: 9596 3324

Open: Wed-Sun dinner

Go-to dish: Onion soup