~ Curious Charlie ~

Belleville Revisited @ Friday, December 14, 2018

Charlie & Co dined as guests.
Saturday 8th December

Serving up the best rotisserie chicken in Melbourne is Belleville, a hidden restaurant x bar upstairs in Chinatown. It's a place you need to know about to find. We love rotisserie chicken, and when it comes to the best in Melbourne, Bellevillie is one of our favorite places.

Recently the menu was updated to move the focus from share plates to seasonal, locally sourced ingredients. We dined at Belleville earlier this year, in March during the comedy festival (if you don't like excessive crowds, this is not a good time to dine) it was dark and very very crowded, but the food was good and we tried quite a few dishes with the 'feed me' menu.

On Saturday the place was buzzing at 8pm, later on there would be a live band and dancing for young people XD Are we showing our age? If you're after a quiet meal go earlier or go for lunch, if you like to party like it's the 21st century Saturday night is the night for you.

With so many fresh delicious new dishes it was hard to choose, but we picked what we'd think would be crowd pleasers along with the classic. Interestingly there's also vegan chicken and cauliflower steak XD.

Heirloom Tomato Tart, chevre creme, herb jam

A light starter, could use more cream. I love all things pastry so we had to get this. It wasn't anything amazing but there's room for amazing potentials with this one. Jas prefers spinach base and make it into a salad as the tart didn't add anything.. While I'd like to leave it as a tart but add caramelized onions in the base with cheese grilled on top. Though the fresh juicy tomato were nice.

Chargrilled Calamari, 'nduja, cavalo nero, mussels

A tomato based sauce drizzled over a seafood island on a bed of kale. Fresh beautiful mussels, the charred calamari smells amazing, a great variation of textures. We would have liked more sauce, something new was "nduja, it's a spicy Italian spreadable salami paste, " I'm glad to say it wasn't spicy, maybe we need a lot more of it in the dish? Smells amazing, very fresh we need to order a plate each next time.

Rotisserie free range chicken, roast chicken jus, miso butter

Served with gravy and hot sauce. It's just as good as always with that crispy skin. You can't go to Belleville and not order this. It's even better with a salad on the side.

Heirloom carrots w/ pistachio dressing and Labneh - On the side we had some baby carrots, with sweet with unique flavors herbs, a greek yoghurt dip base with raisins. I quite liked it.

Baby butter lettuce, pickled radish w/ caramelized pear and Prosecco vinaigrette - the pickled radish was a good acidic contrast to the chicken though we couldn't figure out which part was the pear. This one goes better with the chicken, though if you like sweet go for the carrots.

Wild mushrooms toastie, smoked mozzarella, caramelized leek and fries

Combining three of my favourite 'food groups' is this awesome toastie, with mushrooms and cheese! Also fries, that's a food group right? Crispy on outside fluffy within served with a runny dill aioli, it was perfect! Hello cheese coma, super cheesy. Delicious! Jas's favorite dish tonight. This is definitely a dish to share over dinner, though perfect for a quick lunch on the go too.

The aioli with dill was a great dip for the fries, though I think it need to be thicker as more dip and less drizzle consistency. Love the generous serve of fries! So I'd say we had three sides actually.

As the night gets more busy there's a live band as the lights dim and music goes up.

Baked to order triple chocolate and pretzel cookies, vanilla malt shake

+ buffalo trace bourbon

A very welcome addition to the new menu was spiked* milkshakes and cookies! I had the classic vanilla shake, which wasn't the same as when it's a bourbon milkshake, so we'd only recommend the spiked version.

For me, as I don't drink, it's about the cookies, fresh from the oven (order with dinner as they take 20 mins to be freshly baked). It's a big soft chewy, with tripe chocolate, marshmallows and unexpected (for a cookie ingredient) pretzels to add saltiness, they were perfect!

Delicious dishes, a party night venue if you dine after 8pm. We recommend the mussels, rotisserie chicken, cheese mushroom toasties, and dessert! Though there's also salmon and other delights on the menu that also sound good. Being a Saturday night service was slow but very friendly.