New Zealand's Famed Botswana Butchery Will Open Its First Melbourne Restaurant This Month
After bringing its luxe meat- and seafood-focused offering to Sydney last year, this NZ mainstay is set to land on Flinders Lane.
As a staple of New Zealand's food scene for more than a decade, Botswana Butchery finally crossed the ditch last year, choosing Sydney's Martin Place as the location of its first Aussie restaurant. Now, having thoroughly impressed our northern mates with its luxe meat-focused offering, the concept is gearing up for a Melbourne debut.
Botswana Butchery will unveil its new three-level Flinders Lane restaurant on Tuesday, May 24, giving locals a taste of the brand's signature swanky styling and expansive menu celebrating premium meat and seafood.
By Anna Kucera
With room for 300 punters, the space has a similar look to its siblings, though the Charlotte Spary-designed interiors are also informed by their Melbourne setting. It's a handsome fitout featuring marble-topped counters, sunken dining areas and sumptuous booth seating, as well as two openair terraces.
Centrepiece of the ground floor, the kitchen is using a woodfired grill to celebrate a generous array of quality Aussie meat, while premium seafood and artisan charcuterie are heroed via a dedicated raw and cured bar.
Ocean-fresh bites might include the likes of torched hiramasa kingfish with eggplant relish and burnt orange dressing; the snapper ceviche is finished with tiger's milk; and Alaskan crab leg is piled into a milk bun with remoulade and iceberg lettuce. There's a caviar service, too, or you can get your charcuterie kicks with options like wagyu bresaola and the house chicken paté.
Meat-lovers will find no less than 14 steak — and lamb — cuts sourced from across Victoria and beyond, topping out with the 1.6-kilogram Rangers Valley Tomahawk for $320.
Elsewhere, venison tartare is elevated with Tasmanian wasabi; roasted blue eye is matched with a mussel saffron butter; and a Berkshire pork chop stars grilled figs and fennel pollen. There's also a fitting ode to a New Zealand classic in the whitebait fritters.
More tough decisions await you over on the 1000-strong wine list, which champions Australian and New Zealand drops, and in the upstairs bar, with its expansive offering of cocktails, top-shelf tipples and rare spirits.
Find Botswana Butchery Melbourne at the corner of Flinders Lane and Exhibition Street, Melbourne CBD from May 24, with entrances on Flinders Lane and via Collins Place. It'll open from 11am–late, Tuesday–Saturday.
Images: Botswana Butchery Sydney
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