Char-grilled broccoli on eggplant puree.
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472a Beach Road, Beaumaris, 9589 5557
My score: 3.5/5
Sometimes a restaurant opens and you can almost hear the sighs of relief around the neighbourhood followed by a hundred plans clicking into place. “Let’s go to that new joint for coffee and eggs.” “Why don’t we meet at that place on the beach road for a cheeky spritz?” “I can’t be bothered cooking – let’s just go to Beau for some steak and fish.” “We should have dinner with them: what if we head to Beau for a slap-up dinner and an easy roll home?”
Beau is part of the redevelopment of the Beaumaris Hotel into swish apartments. The major makeover entailed demolishing all but the façade and returning it – from the outside at least – to a facsimile of the original grand Victorian structure, dazzling white with ornate iron work on the balconies and a Mansard roof that no doubt makes for some rather lovely $2 million penthouses.
The Beach Road concourse adjoining the apartments is still being tenanted but Beau and its bottleshop brother Rack and Ruin are already doing keen business. The space is casual and clean with indoor, terrace and pavement tables and high perches with stools; there’s a private room in the cellar too. Surfaces are hard so the volume roams between happy buzz and clattery cacophony. A television seems something of a mismatch but will ensure Beau draws locals for big events.
The smart, approachable one-page menu appeals for its flexibility as much as its rollicking contemporary flavours. There’s an easy facility with European flavours, a bit Frenchy with a skew to the Mediterranean. Just about everything feels the loving touch of Bertha, a charcoal grill and oven.
Small dishes include bread with deeply savoury anchovy-laced butter. Bright, pickled shallots bring a little acidic crunch to the salty funk. Smoked trout is a gentler fishy snack, mashed into rillettes, laced with crème fraiche, and scooped onto delicate lavosh.
There’s a natty section devoted to cheese courses: a wedge of blue, thin slices of pear and discs of pumpernickel are a cracking combination, nicely presented.
A vegetable dish is one of Beau’s best offerings. Broccoli is blanched then charred so it’s bright emerald, giving and black fringed. The chunky florets are piled over smooth and smoky eggplant puree and scattered with crisp fried sage leaves. It’s downright delicious.
Main courses are built for solo dining but easy enough to share and attractive enough to encourage cross-table thievery. Grilled lamb cutlets are piled over carrot-studded cous cous. Strips of melty lamb belly loll amongst it, juicing up the whole dish with their slippery lusciousness. It’s all rather lovely. Snapper is crisp-skinned and moist, the fillet sitting over good potato gnocchi.
Beau is a nice den for drinkers; sneak through a jailhouse door to browse boutique bottles at Rack and Ruin and drink them here for $14.50 corkage, or choose from many daily wines by the glass. Service is pretty good, and will likely hum as the venue settles – there are practiced hands at the tiller. It all adds up to an increase in the neighbourhood happiness index: Beaumaris is lucky to have this Beau in its midst.
See their website.
More Development Dining:
Izakaya Den, Basement, 114 Russell Street, Melbourne, 9654 2977.
The Hero Apartments were one of the first city developments with a groovy basement restaurant to boost desirability. Izakaya Den has been serving up its tasty no-bookings Japanese drinking food behind a hidden doorway for seven years now.
The Kettle Black, 50 Albert Road, South Melbourne, 9088 0721.
A sublime combination of Victorian architecture and highrise splendour, the Fifty Albert apartments have one of Melbourne’s coolest cafes on the ground floor.
Go West, 27 Woodlea Boulevard, Rockbank, 8088 2180.
There’s a bit of the old milk bar at this cafe that services a new residential neighbourhood: think Blue Heaven milkshakes and musk sticks. Contemporary coffee, breakfasts and piadini round out the picture.
White Mojo, 182-184 Whitehorse Road, Balwyn, 9817 7859.
Who would live anywhere that you couldn’t get a soft-shell crab croissant burger right downstairs? No-one, if they could help it, and that’s why the Andalusian is one of leafy Balwyn’s successful developments.
First published in The Age, 29th January 2017.
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