Scott Pickett opens Chancery Lane in Melbourne CBD

Opening a restaurant in a near-abandoned CBD during a pandemic is risky business. Luckily, Scott Pickett’s latest effort is an instant classic.

Creamy dreamy: the potatoes Tartiflette is worth every calorie. Picture Wayne Taylor.

Opening a restaurant is always and inevitably a risky business. Opening a restaurant during a global pandemic? That takes some fortitude.

And opening two, in the CBD, no less?

Scott Pickett’s obviously been eating his Wheaties, for in no surer expression of crazy-brave belief in life returning to some kind of normal in the year ahead, the chef-restaurateur has bet the house we’ll be eating out in the city with gusto again.

First coming in as a white knight to save the mod Thai Longrain from the annals of the city’s COVID casualties – and throwing a lifeline to long-time kitchen and floor staff in the process – he then pushed fast-forward on plans to take over the historic Normanby Chambers up the bewigged end of town.

It’s a space that was most recently Shannon Bennett’s seafood restaurant Iki-jime, but that many will likely better remember as Bistro Vue.

While it sounds like it’s come straight outta Monopoly, Chancery Lane is Pickett’s take on a Modern French bistro named after the lane on which it abuts.

And it is, quite simply, stunning.

Lambs brains “almondine”. Picture Wayne Taylor

I for one love Pickett’s aesthetic honed and evolved over the decade since he first opened The Estelle on Northcote’s High St: dark, moody and masculine with subtle modern accents that elevate and soften, and Chancery Lane looks every part the instant classic it set out to be.

The once bitsy-boxy space has been completely opened up so it’s at once natural light bright and forest green, slate and charcoal dark.

Curvaceous banquettes and bespoke black leather chairs take care of comfort with class, while spacing between the generously sized undressed tables set with hefty silverware and cut glass tumblers feels both luxuriously decadent and pandemic prudent.

There’s a newly extended bar twinkling with spirits while the open kitchen bustles with verve. And it’s from here that Chancery Lane goes from simply looking like an instant classic to becoming one.

Flavour bomb: the perfect pissaladiere

Joining Pickett to head up the kitchen and bring the French bistro-with-a-twist to life is Rob Kabboord, who’s returned to Melbourne after years as head chef at one of Australia’s best restaurants, Quay in Sydney, but who earlier introduced Melbourne to both the artful neighbourhood local and Dutch delicacies at Northcote’s much loved Merricote.

Here it’s a large, though not daunting, carte where suits might sup on wagyu cheeseburgers bottles of Burgundy, dates get impressed with champagne and caviar and freshly shucked oysters from the seafood bar, and anniversaries are celebrated with whole roasted ducks for two.

Though opening just a few days before Christmas and with much of Little Collins remaining shuttered, the dining room is abuzz, which bodes well as the city awakens from its COVID coma in the weeks ahead.

It’s worth shelling out for the scallop, Storm clam and local mussel. Picture Wayne Taylor

It’s well worth ordering some things from the seafood bar while making further decisions.

A plump Portarlington mussel is served under a fennel-aniseedy escabeche ($6 each), a large juicy-meaty Storm Bay clam comes with crunchy cucumber balls topped with electric blue scampi roe ($8 each) and a creamy Hervey Bay scallop is mixed through a tiny dice of fennel and finger lime pearls ($12). Vibrant, fresh and exquisite one and all.

A two-bite take on a pissaladiere, the classic anchovy, onion and olive tart, is an elegant explosion of salty, umami crunch on the most delicate flaky pastry ($8), while fantastically smoky Skipton eel is the base for a shimmering orb of aspic in which a gooey-yolked quail egg hides.

A copper pot of thinnest, crunchiest, poshest pommes allumette (French fries to you and I) are served alongside for a take on fish and chips that favours the brave ($18).

The jellied eel with allumette potatoes. Picture: Wayne Taylor

Moody and masculine: the main dining room has been opened up.

As do fantastically crunchy-creamy lamb’s brains, the little nuggets fried to a crisp under a coat of almond crumbs, a pillowy almond puree underneath adding velvety softness to the stickiest, richest jus you’ll find this side of the Seine.

Don’t think you dig on brains? Think again ($14).

A whole John Dory is one of a few proteins from the grill “for two”, the fish expertly treated and served swimming in Café de Paris butter, the flesh momentarily sticking to the bone before flaking off in fat fillets. Simply perfect ($82).

Alongside, a bubbling cast-iron pot of tartiflette potatoes is a non-negotiable, the rustic rounds of skin-on spud come with fat pancetta batons and a sauce of washed-rind cheese headiness. It’s the type of dish you dream about on a winter’s day and is worth every. Single. Calorie ($18).

The raspberry baba at Chancery Lane is an instant classic.

So is plumping for dessert, for the raspberry baba is a framboise-drizzled, fabulously fruity take on the classic baba au rhum, the cake magically dissolving in a puff sweet air, a raspberry flecked cream diplomat its decadent calling card ($16).

Service, led by manager Alex Mouzo, is eagle eyed, sommelier Hannah Day (ex Rockpool/Rosetta) a lovely presence on hand to guide through a list that’s equal parts worlds old and new, at fairly fair prices for such a lux CBD space (but with room for big-bonus blowouts).

From the subtly branded crockery to discrete leather bill folder, Chancery Lane is the culmination of Pickett’s decade-long journey as a restaurateur.

Filled with pleasures that are and should remain timeless, this is a very Melbourne restaurant at a time Melbourne needs it.

I can’t wait to go back.

CHANCERY LANE

430 Lt Collins St, Melbourne

Open: Tues, Wed, Sat from 6pm; Thurs-Fri from noon

chancerylane.com.au