Don't go looking for French onion soup or bouillabaisse at Oter, the contemporary French restaurant that chef Florent Gerardin​ is cooking up with Coda's Mykal and Kate Bartholomew and Tom Hunter in a Flinders Lane basement.

Classic dishes Gerardin grew up eating in La Rochelle, on France's west coast, form the menu's core, but they'll be distilled to their essence (Oter, pronounced "otay", means to remove or take off). So French onion soup may be recast as a richly flavoured onion sauce alongside beef, and its stock a consomme served with crab.

New windows and fewer walls have brought more light into the dark-timbered subterranean site that housed Japanese restaurant Yu-u, across the laneway from Coda. The dining room will seat 30 to 40 but the focus will be the bar wrapping around the open kitchen, providing "a meal and a show" for a further 13 diners.

Gerardin, a finalist for The Age Good Food Guide 2016 Chef of the Year award, will use equipment left by the former tenants, including a teppanyaki grill, to give dishes such as yakitori and takoyaki (octopus fritters) a French accent.

A separate cocktail bar will serve drinks and snacks such as freshly shucked oysters – a French classic that Gerardin doesn't intend to mess with.

Oter is expected to open at 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, by the end of March.