Four things to order at Chris Lucas’s new French restaurant Maison Batard

It’s taken the better half of a decade to open, but in two weeks Chris Lucas will finally launch his long-awaited French restaurant— and here’s everything you need to order.

The cork will finally pop on Melbourne restaurateur Chris Lucas’s long-awaited French restaurant, Maison Batard, in two weeks.

Until then, British-born executive chef Adam Sanderson (of The Fat Duck and Copenhagen’s Noma) has revealed his ride or die menu items to stoke your appetitie.

The three-level behemoth will be the first French venue in the Lucas Restaurants stable, with the menu taking a modern approach to provincial-style cooking.

Roast chicken with green olives.

Poulet Rôti aux Olives

The French equivilant to Australia’s ‘Bachelor’s Handbag’. If you’ve visited Paris, you’ve most likely seen the stalls and shops spinning roast chooks in their windows; the drippings raining on a mountainous crunch of spuds beneath. At Maison Batard, the chooks will be spun from the Josper in the ground floor kitchen, served simply with green olives like they do in Saint Germain restaurant, Allard. Add a glass of Mersault for best results.

Salmon and sauce verte

Confit Ora King Salmon

A simple seafood dish heroing the Rolls Royce of New Zealand salmon, Ora King. Served with ‘sauce verte’; a slippery green number blizted from green tomato, garlic, basil, chervil, parsley, lemon juice and olive oil, for acidity and kick.

French bistro fave; the King Crab Salad.

Salade de Crab Royale

Salade de Crab Royale is a fiercly fresh summer time salad riffing on the Parisian bistro fave; King Crab Salad. Royal and rich in its own right: Maison Batard uses buttery handpicked Queensland spanner crab, peppered throughout a forest of butter letteuce and avocado hunks, with a decent grind of the pepper wheel.

A classic French omellete

Omelette de Pommes de Terre

It’d be a jailable offence to open a French restaurant and not serve a classic omelette. This one is luxuriously rolled with potatoes, served neatly with a crown of caviar. How classy.