The Town Mouse

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312 Drummond Street, Carlton, 9347 3312

My score: 4/5

The most exciting new restaurants are those that balance a spry freshness with a settled feeling, that are original but comprehensible, that tap into an existing sense of what hospitality should be and can be. On all counts, The Town Mouse succeeds. This is a restaurant that knows what it wants to be, for both staff and diners, and that’s a great basis for good times. For the owners, New Zealander restaurant professionals with Melbourne history, Town Mouse is a nimble, durable neighbourhood business of manageable size. For customers, Town Mouse is a place to drop in for a solo bite at the bar, to meet friends for six or sixteen smashing snacks, to bring a date for cocktails, shaved calamari and moodily lit conversation. It’s in the building which most recently housed Embrasse and before that Three One Two and Donnini’s. Put simply, it’s a wine bar with great food.

Chef Dave Verheul’s cooking is soulful and smart, with a happy knack for wielding big flavours with delicate aim. Take the pork jowl from the ‘Sharing’ portion of the menu (though it’s all good for sharing, really). The meat is cut-with-a-spoon tender, marinated in miso and mustard, slow-cooked, fried to order. It’s massively rich and tasty but it’s served with smoky carrot kimchi (fermented pickle), tart and crunchy radish and apple, prettily shrouded in daikon slices. The whole dish is held together with a gorgeous sauce of emulsified pork stock and peanut oil.

Other good things include jaunty little profiteroles, slightly dehydrated to make them shatter-crisp filled with goat’s cheese mousse, and elegantly retro crab balls served with preserved lemon curd and translucent potato-and-nori shards. Dessert often feels like a begrudging afterthought in small restaurants without a dedicated pastry chef. Not here. There’s a joyousness in dishes like quince crumble, and the citrus curd that’s offset by dramatically black pastry crumbs (dyed with coconut ash), showered with white chocolate and topped with a fun meringue tube filled with coconut sorbet.

My only reservation is the stools, which are the only seating option. The up side is that they promote intense forward-leaning chatter. The down side is that many of us won’t sit comfortably for long without more support for bums and backs. Oh well, I guess we’ll just leave when the numbness sets in and come back again very soon.

See their website.

More Carlton:

Brunetti, 380 Lygon Street, Carlton, 9347 2801
It would be mean to call the huge, shiny new Brunetti the Costco of the cafe world but I feel the same when I walk in: covetous, excited and a little overwhelmed.

Killiney Kopitiam, 114 Lygon Street, Carlton, 9650 9880
This Singaporean-style coffee house has classics like kaya toast (coconut jam and heaps of butter on white bread), chicken rice and hawker dishes like mee goreng. Cheap, fast, easy.

Epocha, 49 Rathdowne Street, Carlton, 9036 4949
Settling in nicely at the city end of Rathdowne Street, Epocha is a relaxed option for modern European dining. Consider the Sunday roast (a $45 feast) and weekday express lunches ($20).

First published in The Age, May 19, 2013