Botswana Butchery Melbourne review: Steaks and veg celebrated at New Zealand export

This long-awaited New Zealand steakhouse has finally opened in Melbourne and means serious business when it comes to steak.

Kara Monssen

3 min read

June 15, 2022 - 12:00PM

Food

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I love that “I-could-be-anywhere-in-the-world” feeling you get when eating at some of our city’s restaurants.

Martinis and gnocco fritto at Andrew McConnell’s Gimlet? You’re practically in Europe. Neon signs cascading from the ceiling at Japanese grillhouse Robata scream big Tokyo energy. Yet eating at new steakhouse Botswana Butchery is an eclectic mix of ski lodge meets pub. Don’t be fooled – those blindingly bright dining room lights and eye-popping gold velvet lounge chairs are merely red herrings.

This New Zealand export packs a solid food and drink punch.

It’s a meaty affair at Botswana Butchery. Picture: Garth Oriander

Good Group Hospitality crossed the ditch to open the Sydney and Melbourne outposts of its casual restaurants that are part of the Kiwi vernacular in Auckland and Queenstown.

Melbourne was meant to have bragging rights for the first Botswana Butchery, with group chief executive Russell Gray even moving to town before the proposed launch in 2020.

But when Sydney came out in the pandemic wash first, it left Melbourne to open later than expected, at the end of May.

You’ll find the cosy, 300-odd seater pumping across three levels at the former Tazio site on food-mad Flinders Lane.

Everything about Botswana Butchery is a bit extra, from those kitschy meat cleaver door handles, weighty black leather-bound menus to that wine collection on display behind glass in the upstairs dining room. Even what culinary director Angel Fernandez (former Dante, New York City) is churning out of the kitchen covers a lot of ground.

Despite what it says on the tin, it’s not just meat.

You might be lured by the abundance of seafood, including fresh or buttermilk-battered oysters bobbing in either apple and cucumber mignonette or loaded with white sturgeon caviar.

Speaking of fancy fish eggs, they can be ordered for blini topping or via the bump while slamming down a vodka shot, depending on the occasion.

The venison tartare is a must.

Maybe veg will take your fancy with ultrafine persimmon chips ($26) piled on snow white buffalo curds decorated with pine nuts and a lick of basil oil. It’s at once salty-sweet, nutty toasty, creamy-herbaceous, with every mouthful a delightful surprise of persimmon two ways, fried crisp or crunchy raw. A skilled expression of veg.

We enter carnivore territory with the venison tartare ($32), which is encouraged to be tumbled tableside in a zingy lemon rind, dried eschalot and anchovy mayonnaise.

Scoop every last meaty morsel into your mouth with that semolina lavosh cracker – it’s a sucker punch of salty, umami funk.

That power and complexity continues in the duck ($52) plucked from Aylesbury Farms in Macedon and the Great Ocean Rd. Fernandez brines and then dries the breast meat over two days before throwing it on the grill to breathe in the woodfire smoke.

Have your pick of one of 13 steaks. Picture: Garth Oriander

Perfectly cooked with a blushing pink centre and cellophane fine skin, it’s teamed with a sweet quince jelly, salty Tuscan cabbage chipsthat deserve their own product line and an indulgently good gravy. A worthy alternative to steak.

But it you’re here for the main event, there are 13 choices, largely from Gippsland and Geelong, as well as the signature roaring forties lamb rack that’s too big to share between two. You could spend $320 on the primitive 1.6kg Rangers Valley tomahawk, but we meet in the middle with the 300g Wanderer sirloin that’s been fed a mix of grass and grain from Lockington near Echuca.

You’ll have to choose your sides and sauce. An elevated take on the childhood dinnertime staple of butter whipped potatoes, with a pond of chicken gravy and chicken skin crackle, is a wise choice.

If you have room for sweets, make a beeline for the brandy creme brulee ($20) which strikes a nice balance between savoury and sweet without the sugar ick.

Prices are up there, but Botswana Butchery makes for value for money, wholesome eating with large portions that will have you sweating out your meat coma for days to come.