Getting Cosy Within Cooee Of Home
The Age
Tuesday March 4, 1997
NO MATTER how much we wish and dream, unless we live on the corner of Spring and Bourke Streets, Stella will never be our local restaurant. And unless we live on the sunny side of Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, Cafe Di Stasio won't be our local either.
Instead, we are more likely to find a pizza joint or a Chinese takeaway just around the corner.
Wouldn't it be fabulous to find a comfy little bistro with good, honest food, staff who recognise and welcome you after only one visit, all within cooee of home? Somewhere you can drop in for coffee and cake, as well as a decent meal.
On a Friday night the relatively new BYO in Burke Road, Bistro Pepito's, is chockful of locals in jeans, drinking good chardonnay and enjoying just such a bistro.
Pepito's is a one-room restaurant, with seven or eight white-paper-over-cloth tables, timber chairs and burnt-saffron colored walls. The front has long glass windows, so you can see the total absence of beautiful people failing to promenade on the street, while the decor inside consists mainly of a tall, wrought-iron candle-stand in front of a mirror, a few brightly colored parrots and fish on the walls, and a range of olive oil tins above the door.
The menu is similarly simple. Divided into salads (five), risotto (two), pasta (five sauces for three types of homemade pasta) and mains (three), the menu looks at first like one of those frightening Aussie-Italian lists you find along Lygon Street. But look closer and you'll see more interesting offerings, like a West Indian salad of chicken with grilled peppers, mango and pinenuts, or a New Orleans-inspired jambalaya.
Less frantic on a Saturday than a Friday night, Pepito's has a welcoming feel that's almost magnetic. Owner Jean-Pierre Boutefeu cuts bread on our arrival, served with (thankfully soft) butter. (Will someone please explain to our budding restaurateurs that only good, crusty, Italian-style bread suits the olive oil bath.)
Our first course of Venetian salad ($9.50) comes as five slices of sugar-cured blue-eye cod, slightly too thick, draped over dressed red coral lettuce. Underneath are properly cooked and flavored borlotti beans, lots of whole flat parsley leaves, while two lemon wedges sit expectantly on the side. The fish, although quite salty, seems to enjoy the beans' company, and the parsley and lemon help it to dance on the tongue.
A special of risotto with three cheeses ($9) is similarly upfront: sharp and creamy with melted Blue Castello cheese and Italian Parmesan, while a little dollop of mascarpone subsides into the top. Strips of slightly crunchy, lightly browned onion provide texture in an otherwise over-cooked rice base. The dish is rescued from obscurity, though, by the sheer quality of the flavors.
A textbook jambalaya ($16.90) arrives in a bowl the size of the MCG, full of good tender chicken, lashings of capsicum, a few slices of mushroom and four prawns on a bed of nicely nutty rice. It is simple, clear-tasting food that survives on the freshness of the ingredients. Unfortunately, the prawns are cooked to an ordinary, mushy consistency, despite their contribution to the flavor of the sauce.
Equally satisfying is a Moroccan-spiced salmon with chickpea salsa, curiously served on a bread and butter plate, which comes with a side-dish of salad. A single, skinless, darne of salmon, bone-in, cuddles up to good hummus, with a nicely sharp tomato and chickpea salsa splashed on top. Unfortunately the salmon is cooked all the way through, but the integrity of the hummus and the thin, yet bright, spice crust on the outside all give the dish credibility.
Really big on flavor is the strawberry salad with green peppercorns and balsamic ($6.50). Ripe, small strawberries have a sweetish, beautifully perfumed sauce just clinging to each berry half, while mild gunshots of green peppercorn give the dish enough spark to stop you falling into an amorous stupor.
It is this dish that shows what chef Phil Burge (formerly of Le Marche and Maxims) does best. There are good quality ingredients and real flavors preserved with careful handling, without unnecessary garnishes or complications. You can still taste it as you pay the bill. You can taste it as you leave to walk to your car. And you can still taste it as you check out the homes for sale in Balwyn and East Kew in the window of the real-estate agent up the road.
With a local restaurant as good as this, you may just be tempted to change suburbs.
THE CHECK
Bistro Pepito's
1353 Burke Road, East Kew
Tel: 9817 5556
Open: Lunch Tuesday-Saturday 10am-3pm
Dinner Wednesday-Saturday 6pm-10pm BYO
Owners: Jean-Pierre Boutefeu and Gerard Bos
Chef: Phil Burge
Cards: none
Cost: about $48 for two (for two courses)
© 1997 The Age
