Brico – Introduction

Brico in Melbourne is the new kid on the block, run by a team that is anything but new. Each of the main players here have deep experience in the restaurant game both in Australia and overseas.

We were lucky enough to score a seat the first night Brico opened to the public and our meal was delightful – with great food, wonderful wine and very professional service.

It was quite nostalgic for us returning to this space which we used to visit often in the 1980s and 1990s when it was Tansy’s Restaurant run by Tansy Good – at the time it was, along with Stephanie’s, one of the finest restaurants in Melbourne.

Anyway, back to the present! Who are the people behind this wine bar that everyone we meet seems to be talking about?

Their Instagram site provides the background of their work in London and then Australia after returning here. We should add that on our visits to London over the past decade our most enjoyable experiences have been at pFranco, Bright and Brawn, each of which at least one of the team has worked at.

The team consists of Phil Bracey, Tegan Ella Hendel, Josh Begbie and Robyn Nethercote and Phil, Josh and Robyn were all on the floor the night we dined there.

And now to the menu that we have included below. It is essentially a set of snacks of gradually increasing weight, with nothing on the list being too heavy.

The Iris baguette that was served with cultured butter comes from a baker (in Brunswick) that is nearby to Brico and getting a lot of attention recently. It was delicious.

Next followed dishes such as mussels in escabeche with aioli which you can see in the photo below. This was a very tasty dish where the mussels had been preared perfectly for this dish.

There was also nostalgia associated with the next dish which was chickpea panisse with Parmesan shavings and lemon. For many years we owned a house in Provence with some friends and were able to make relatively frequent trips to Nice where panisse is a very common dish. We often enjoyed a similar dish at La Merenda in that town which is one of our favourite restaurants.

At Brico they were presented as crunchy, crisp batons decked with shavings of Parmesan accompanied by a wedge of lemon as can be seen below.

Next came grilled ox tongue with pink eye potatoes (from Tasmania) were cooked with skill and passion. We mention that they come from Tasmania as we believe that the cooler cimate in our home State lends itself to vegetables being grown slower than on the mainland and hence ending up with vegetables with better texture and better flavour. These potatoes had been grown organically by friends of ours from Felds Farm which are always perfect.

Finally, we decided to indulge in the dessert which was an olive oil cake served with a rhubarb and strawberry fool. We have a particular love of olive oil cake and felt that it would be a perfect match for the fool. When it came to the table we knew that the two flavours would be perfect together – and they were!

We accompanied these with a La Navine from Les Vignes de Babass. This beautiful Chenin Blanc is made by Sébastien Dervieux from old vines grown south of Angers in the Loire Valley – a perfect wine for this food and a tribute to the Brico wine selection! 

This area of the Loire Valley, below the city of Angers is famous for the Chenin Blanc wines that are produced here, both sweet and dry are produced. This wine was quite dry and made by an expert – his wines are always very, very good!

You will notice on the wine label that the wine underwent “spontaneous” fermentation

You can book for Brico here.

We have included Brico in our summary of where we eat in Melbourne here.