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Everyone who goes to Brico talks about the wine, but I think we should start with the pork. Not just because it’s tasty – oh, it certainly is – but because it says so much about the approach at this lovely new Carlton North restaurant. Or is it a wine bar? And what does that mean anyway? We’ll get to that, too.

The pork comes from McIvor Farm in Tooborac, 100 kilometres north of Melbourne. Third-generation farmer Jason Hagan and his wife Belinda, an agriculture all-rounder, see themselves as growers and nurturers of soil as much as livestock.

Their free-range, black Berkshire pigs are moved from paddock to paddock each week, munching a bespoke mix of grains as well as the millet, maize, oats, buckwheat, radishes and turnips that are sown especially for their grazing. As they wreak their special porcine violence on the ground – nosing, trampling, digesting – they enrich the earth and make themselves delicious. After six months of happy hogging, pig becomes pork, and it’s the Scotch fillet (the neck) that finds its way to Brico.

Sweet and marbled, the meat is cooked over charcoal and served with beans and bagna cauda, the “warm bath” of anchovies and garlic that you might come upon in Provence or Piedmont and which works wonderfully with the juicy, smoky fillet and bright, fresh greens ($43).

So what does this dish tell us about Brico? It points to the fact that thoughtful sourcing is at the heart of the place, whether it’s meat, vegetables, wine or sake, and that pays off for farmers and diners alike. Good produce isn’t just better for the earth and soul, it’s often profoundly more satisfying to eat and drink than characterless or over-engineered factory stuff.

But careful procurement extends beyond the edible and drinkable. Before Brico’s December 2023 opening, chef Simon Ball-Smith ditched gas in favour of healthier, greener, induction cooktops. The small charcoal grill that kisses the pork is the only flame in the kitchen. All these decisions suggest the Brico team has aspirations that extend beyond showing diners a nice time. Ethics underpin and buoy their efforts and the restaurant (wait! Is it a wine bar?) feels energised, positive, uncomplicated.

I sensed it in the sourdough baguette ($4 per person), a generous hunk from Iris The Bakery in Brunswick – and in the crudites with taramasalata ($19), a swipeable, crunchy array as colourful as an Easter hat parade.

Sherry-spiked pipis jostle with jamon, butter beans and rye croutons in a ragged symphony ($34): oily, waxy, salty.

Gorgeously robust olive oil cake is a steady partner for a swirl of rhubarb yoghurt ($16).

The feeling is there, too, in the music, which jaunts from jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd to cool-again Steely Dan, all on vinyl, jamming with the mood of the room.

The team here is friendly, smart, schooled and accomplished enough to be up for fun. The owners are wine buddies Phil Bracey and Josh Begbie and their respective partners, designer Tegan Ella Hendel and operations manager Robyn Nethercote.

If you’ve sipped natural wine in East London over the past decade, you might’ve come across these guys at P. Franco, Bright or Brawn; locally, they’ve worked recently at Fitzroy’s Bar Liberty.

Brico’s corner location has history. Most recently, it was cheery Little Andorra and some will remember Flor but, in the 1980s, it was the original home of Tansy’s, a leading BYO. (When local food-writing legend Rita Erlich reviewed that restaurant, she ordered grilled snapper with lentils and truffles “because I thought it wouldn’t work”. She was proved wrong: the unlikely combination was a delight. “It was a triumph of flavours,” she reflects in her book, Melbourne By Menu. “It was like eating a piece of music.” Chef Tansy Good now has an eponymous restaurant in Kyneton.)

Lastly, the wine-bar question. The brevity and snackiness of the menu suggest we’re in a bar, and I’m sure the people slurping oysters ($6) on stools at the counter reckon they’re in a bar, especially if they’re chitter-chattering about the low-intervention, small-producer, wine-geek offerings here. But the half-curtains, bistro chairs, fine cooking, warm service and ability to book a table say “restaurant” to me.

What does it matter? Brico has the hopeful hospitality of a family business anchored in its neighbourhood as well as a worldliness that offers a sophisticated snapshot of Melbourne dining. It’s simple: Brico is a good place to go.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine