North and Common restaurant review: Kara Monssen visits Pentridge Prison

Forget prison-style bain-marie or gruel, Coburg’s new restaurant in the slammer is delivering some criminally good food and drink.

Dinner in the slammer? North and Common is not what you would expect.

Dinner in the slammer, cocktails in the clink.

A new restaurant in Pentridge Prison’s fortress, what will this crime-obsessed city think of next?

Stand down marketing boffins, you won’t need to blow the budget to get people to Coburg’s famous bluestone. The experience sells itself. I mean, who wouldn’t want to eat where Chopper Read chopped his you know what?

A lot has changed since those dark days. There’s no gruel, canteens or bain-marie meals.

North and Common is doing simple, not overly showy, food and drinks, refreshingly without gimmicks.

The Pentridge site was given a mega-makeover last year, and is now home to a cinema, supermarket, hotel and wine bar. The place is so different it’s easy to forget you’re in jail.

In a way the ultra-modern fit out – filled with blonde timber tables, pastel blue walls, and terracotta tiled floors – makes it feel like we’re eating at Chadstone or Chapel St. Tall ceilings and exposed timber beams are the only remaining nods to past.

Executive chef Mark Glenn (ex-Cumulus) is on the tools, returning to Melbourne fresh from a stint at Canberra’s farm-to-fork restaurant Pialligo Estate. He took the baton from Thomas Woods, who was at the helm for a hot minute, before leaving in May.

The spatchcock.

Together they’ve cooked up a modern (and simple) offering built around the seasons and restaurant flavours of the month such as raw fish, pasta and large format meats.

Glenn keeps things fresh and fun with his cheffy know-how and clever twists.

Tiles of cured cobia ($26), a full-flavoured grippy catch, is countered by a surrounding wreath of spring onion and radish frizz. It’s a bright, textural and pretty as a picture plate of food.

The same could be said for the wagyu ox tongue ($24), a rosette of blushing pink meat that’s a world away from your folks’ (awful) offal home cook attempts. Think prosciutto meets corned beef in texture, slicked with a sweet glaze.

Risoni will no longer be overlooked as the poor man’s pasta after you’ve tried North and Common’s take. It requires some financial outlay ($46), though that snow white crab meat stirred through chewy pasta pebbles ripples with a soul-warming crustacean emulsion that’s worth every cent. More please.

Warm honey pudding.

I had higher hopes for the spatchcock ($48), out of puff and bitterness in places; instead I’ll order two serves of that warm honey pudding ($18) next time.

Sommelier Liinaa Berry continues her good wine offensive, giving us something new to fawn over from Olivine next door.

There’s a strong Victorian focus, by the glass and bottle, with French and Italian heroes also given airtime.

Maybe you’ll sip clean and nimble Yarra Valley sauvignon blanc and pinot noir, a voluptuous Beechworth chardonnay or grunty Margaret River cabernet. I also rated the choice to drink posh pours through the discovery list.

Even non-drinkers can get their pulse racing with a Tabasco tickled pal-NO-ma or funky pour of Brunswick brewed kombucha.

There is something for everyone.

This could be a criminally bad clichéd restaurant, though North and Common is anything but. It’s writing a promising new chapter for Coburg, Pentridge and prison restaurants alike.