Macelleria – the good fat

THEME: SLOW FOOD, FAST

MACELLERIA​ ★★★½
87-89 SWAN STREET, RICHMOND, 9425 9393
LICENSED AE MC V EFTPOS
DAILY NOON-10.30PM
STEAK: $19.90-$31.50; BURGERS: $9.90-$18.90; SIDES: $5-$9

It was a note under a Sydney door that brought Macelleria, a butcher that cooks, to Richmond. "If you don't bring this to Melbourne, we're going to copy it," said the missive. Owner Peter Zaidan​, self-described "chief meatologist", read the scrawl in his wildly successful 180-seat Newtown meat shop and restaurant, the second venue after his busy Bondi trailblazer. He knew the scribes – regular customer and Channel Seven presenter Hamish McLachlan was one – and he started working with them on crossing the state line.

The result is a 90-seat steakhouse with a difference. Beef, skewers, sausages and chops are displayed as though in a butcher's shop. Diners browse the meat, select their cut and how they want it cooked, choose sauces and sides, then sit back and wait while their premium beef (grass-fed from Cape Grim in Tasmania, grain-fed Tajima wagyu) is grilled. The fast-food service model – think Grill'd – means high-quality produce can be served at easy-carve prices.

Wood-handled steak knives, supermarket salt and pepper and laminated spiral-bound drinks lists wait on bare timber tables. The most expensive red is a Barossa shiraz at $55 but if you want sav blanc or Pure Blonde beer with your eye fillet, no one is going to look askance.

Zaidan says he wants to educate diners about meat: that provenance matters, good fat is healthy, "lesser" cuts aren't really and, above all, excellent steak isn't just for fat cats spending up on fine dining. Macelleria hits most of the marks though the engagement of the staff varies markedly: some spill with joy, others parrot lines about Tasmania's pure air without giving the sense that they've ever salivated over a juicy piece of rib-eye.

I have, though. You can't argue with the product: it's excellent, aged for eight weeks in a Sydney coolroom to reduce moisture and concentrate flavour, then cooked and rested with respect. A steak "doneness" mural steers people away from requesting anything more than medium ("Well done? Don't ask") though I'm sure they'd cook your steak to buggery if you begged.

The sauces – classic pepper, mushroom or red wine – are a little claggy but the sides are great. Skin-on chips are cooked in oil that's filtered twice daily and turned over three or four times a week. Sweet potato chips are crinkle cut and crisp – they're the best I've had.

The salads include a retro creamy coleslaw that made me close my eyes and reminisce about 1990 (that's a compliment) and an up-to-the-minute kale-and-quinoa slaw. Burgers are excellent, made with 100 per cent steak, not lower-grade trimmings.

It's hard to go past the Melbourne-exclusive, Richmond-wooing Dustino Martino – with bacon, cheddar and smoky barbecue sauce. There's no dessert but Gelato Messina is just down the road.

Peter Zaidan grew up in Sydney as one of 11 children, and from the age of eight he worked in his family's Coogee fruit shop, where he learnt to critique produce and reject second best. Meat was butchered by the extended family, packed by the kids, and stored in a chest freezer to feed the family for a month. A sense of provenance, transparency and a notion that you didn't need to be rich to eat well was the unconscious credo of the family kitchen. It's this that Zaidan expresses in Macelleria, a butcher that cooks for the masses.