Review: Scott Pickett’s Matilda 159 in South Yarra serves firey fare with flair

SCOTT Pickett’s latest fire-powered addition to his restaurant group serves fare with flair, writes Dan Stock.

A TANGO of yellow and orange that flickers with blue-green as alluring and fleeting as a wink, pulsing with insistent red, offering a comfort that belies restless power and barely tamed fury, in these screen-dominated days it doesn’t take a genius to work out why the simple act of watching an open fire still speaks so loudly.

For within those coals and flames and radiant heat there’s safety and warmth and the promise of denatured protein that speaks directly to our animal brain that’s an altogether more pleasant reminder of our ancestral past than a vestigial tail.

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It does, however, take someone smarter than me to work out why it’s taken chefs so long to harness that appeal.

Sure, “flame-grilled” is nothing new - Hungry Jacks was onto that decades ago – but over the past few years turning off the gas and cooking over coals has become hot stuff and elevated into an art.

Scott Pickett’s new restaurant Matilda 159 is all fire and nice

And while every chef worth their box of Redheads these days is playing with a coal-fired Josper oven, few have the wherewithal to take their kitchen completely off grid.

There’s no mistaking the mission statement at Scott Pickett’s latest addition to his restaurant stable. With a smoker hissing, grill crackling with fat flares and coals glowing along the open kitchen by the entrance, the heat is insistent, powerful and enveloping.

It’s Melbourne’s most welcoming restaurant – in winter at least.

There’s wood everywhere – powering the kitchen, stacked along the walls, trunks transformed into the most extraordinarily beautiful tables it almost is worth visiting alone just to sit at. There’s fawn-soft leather banquettes to sink into, clever lighting at night that’s at once intimate and flattering, dioramas of artful dried botanical things opposite the long bar that separates kitchen from most diners.

Cleve lighting at night adds intimacy to the dining room with plush leather banquette you sink into and tables so beautiful you could come just to sit at them.

Thoughtful, handsome, masculine and very, very brown, it’s the George Clooney of dining rooms.

Scott’s had time to think about restaurant number five, in the works for at least three years, now taking the ground and basement levels of the ultra-luxe United Place 12-room hotel above.

Harnessing lessons learnt over the past decade across Estelle, St Crispin and his fine-diner ESP, this is an accessible offering of name-checked produce (David Blackmore wagyu, Macedon Ranges duck) with a smattering of native ingredients priced for repeat custom, which, open lunch and dinner daily, it’ll need.

I’d happily come back for the excellent octopus, sea salty and ticked with smoke, tender but textural with macadamia in puree and slivered form adding creamy nuttiness ($24). And for that Blackmore 9+ bavette with a wattleseed crust that you cut with made-to-spec knives from France (that complements vintage cutlery that feels good in your hands).

Geraldton wax - here with smoked beetroot - is one example of the native ingredient bent to the menu

And, indeed, for the paperbark smoked Flinders Island lamb ribs – assertively smoked and salted, meaty, moreish, with great gnawing stickiness at the end of the bones ($26) – and a perfectly treated tiger flathead, served whole, deboned, and with a bright sauce of smoked mussels ($38).

With all that fire and smoke bold exuberance can get in the way of finesse – a smoked bone marrow crust stomps all over the simple elegance of a rusty wire oyster ($4.5 each) – other times it’s welcome. Not that I’m suggesting it, but you could make a lovely, simple lunch out of a serve of the burnt bran bread speckled with wattleseed that’s served with a cheesy aged butter and outrageously delicious smoked chicken rillets to spread atop. At least paying $7 for bread is memorable for the right reasons.

Paperbark smoked lamb ribs are meaty, moreish and gnawingly good.

While it’s certainly pretty the spanner crab – picked and served in its shell with finger lime and mixed with too much crème fraiche– was underwhelming, the grilled flatbread it’s served with damper-like and dense, with no discernible crustacean to the prawn butter ($34).

The wine list features a lovely selection of interest across all budgets, which suits an early days crowd that’s a cross section of town: young families, 20-something dates and blokes doing business, industry types and grey haired gourmands. The room and menu is appealing to all and includes a tarte tatin to finish that, apparently, has taken hundreds of goes to get right.

It’s very good, caramelised sticky pastry holding sweet pink lady apples, a vanilla ice cream losing the battle against the hot fruit and becoming a smoky-sweet sauce atop ($19).

Pink lady tart tatin is a sticky sweet full stop to a meal

It’s an enjoyably solid offering from a seasoned operator who knows what he’s doing (apart from, perhaps, the music, a pedestrian selection of bland). It’s a great winter space. How the dark and moody restaurant that does such a good job of cosseting with cosy warmth handles the summer, though, will determine how Matilda waltzes through the seasons. But I reckon her dance card deserves to be full.

Matilda 159

Rating: 15/20

Address: 159 Domain Rd, South Yarra

Website: Matilda159.com

Phone: [phone]

Open: Lunch and dinner daily

Go-to dish: Flinders Island lamb ribs