Basking in Côte Basque

Andrew McConnell has brought back the cosmopolitan, the lolly-pink cranberry vodka thing favoured by Carrie Bradshaw and her coterie on Sex And The City in the late '90s and early '00s. You're offered one – or a martini – the moment you take your seat at Côte Basque, his and partner Jo McGann's newest opening on Crossley Street. 

Cosmos are bloody awful but we're going to forgive McConnell this uncharacteristic lapse. You're going to order the martini instead, which is magnificent. Ice-cold and dirtier than an incognito browser history, it's the perfect way to begin what should be one of the best Melbourne meals you'll have this year.

First, a word on the name. The direct translation is self-explanatory – the Basque Coast – and most of what you'll eat here takes inspiration from that unique region of Europe which stretches from northern Spain across the border into southwestern France, with the Bay of Biscay on one side and the Pyrenees on the other. That means it is Spanish-ish – seafood, primarily – with the kind of deceptively simple cooking that leaves absolutely no room for error.

But there's an alt reference as well: La Côte Basque was an impossible-to-book, high society restaurant in mid-20th century New York, immortalised by a Truman Capote short story published in Esquire magazine in the '70s. In 'La Côte Basque, 1965' Capote baldly recounts the monstrously snippy gossip he collected from various socialites who dined with him over the years, exposing their most scandalous secrets. It's a bawdy, boisterous read, and it led to Capote's total expulsion from those society circles, leaving him to expire alone in a corpulent puddle of drink and drugs.