Chef Louis Naepels and sommelier Tess Murray’s bijou country venue Chauncy is now an intimate, hosted experience, a sublime melding of French cuisine and Australian hospitality.
French$$$$
In a world where progress is usually about more and bigger, how glorious to celebrate the beauty of less and smaller. Two years ago, French restaurant Chauncy dropped from 35 to 25 seats per service. This year, four years after first opening, the maximum number of diners has decreased again. Now, just 14 people are welcomed: there’s a shared table for eight and a private room seats four to six.
An already bijou restaurant has polished itself further to become an intimate, hosted experience, where everyone enjoys the same long, lovely progression of courses, and you’re looked after with exquisite care by the owners, sommelier Tess Murray and chef Louis Naepels. The pair live and grow their own food here alongside 21 chickens and a boofy maremma dog called Basil.
The French concept of table d’hôte is something I wish we saw more of in Australia. It’s relaxing to eschew choice and trust in the ride. You also sense a calm that arises when a restaurant strips back the tricky feats of coordination required to cook a multiplicity of dishes at different times. Here, every iota of attention is concentrated and honed, for those providing and receiving. It’s rare to be looked after in such a way.
There are commercial realities to this: luxury isn’t cheap, although the value is easy to reconcile. Your meal is inclusive of beverages, either wine selected by Murray with intention and fondness or her thrilling non-alcoholic concoctions or a sober-curious mixture. You need to understand how wonderful it is to be immersed in this sublime melding of French cuisine and Australian hospitality.
Unlike many set menus, the Chauncy meal is tra-la-la, not bam-bam-bam.
The restaurant is in an 1854 sandstone building surrounded by a picturesque, productive, edible garden. Wherever you look, every touch has been considered. Copper pots speak of culinary heritage and legacy, while flowers suggest both joy and ephemera. There’s exquisite crockery, the red splash of radishes against a white tablecloth, the light relaxing as the courses progress, which is mirrored by the shoulders-down, smiles-up mood-merge of diners enjoying a convivial lunch.
This is a daytime-only place, though your 12.30pm booking might run until six-ish if you intersperse your afternoon with a spot of petanque or a garden wander.
Naepels brings influences from his native France, where he cooked in Paris and the Basque country in fancy restaurants and – perhaps as importantly – with his
grandmother. In Melbourne, he was head chef at Grossi Florentino, where he met Murray.
Unlike many set menus, the Chauncy meal is tra-la-la, not bam-bam-bam, a sensitive progression rather than a series of knockout punches, and you feel good at the end of it.
You might begin with mussels on waxy, homegrown potatoes, dotted and dashed with parsley oil. The day’s sprightliest veg may be arranged over bagna cauda, a warm sauce of anchovy and garlic, a still life that’s a pleasure to ruin.
There will be pasta, perhaps tortellini filled with chicken and dotted with morels
and tarragon. Meats are from boutique suppliers, cooked with honour and sauced with impeccable technique.
After cheese, there’s the classic Ile flottante – poached meringue paddling in custard, a dish made possible by the hens strutting through late-afternoon sunbeams spotted out the window.
Chauncy is executed with pure, piercing hospitality, and the heart poured into every detail is arresting and humbling. Lunch here is a disarming, joyful expression of connection, and an ode to the delights of the small.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Serene, dreamy and delightful
Go-to dishes: Mussels with potato; Chauncy vegetables; tortellini with morels; Ile flottante
Drinks: Host and sommelier Tess Murray is adept at matching drinks to a person, meeting mood, occasion and preference with the perfect small-batch wine or house-made non-alcoholic concoction.
Cost: $280-$350 per person, including drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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