Chef Donovan Cooke to open 60-seat Ryne in Fitzroy North

Good news for diners with long memories. Donovan Cooke, one half of the kitchen team that shook up the Melbourne dining scene in the late '90s with Est Est Est, is opening a new restaurant in Fitzroy North.

After almost seven years helming the 260-seat Atlantic at Crown, Cooke is heading northside to open Ryne, an Anglo-Saxon word that evokes the circle of life.

"I want to get back to what I like doing best – cooking for smaller numbers," says the Marco Pierre White alumnus.

Teaming up on the 60-seat restaurant with fellow chef Alex Law, Cooke is promising a contemporary take on classical French-inspired food – technique-heavy dishes involving hare and rabbit that turned restaurant critics to water and earned Est Est Est the Best New Restaurant gong in The Age Good Food Guide 1998.

The compact menu will have five entrees, mains and desserts priced at $65 for two courses, $80 for three and $150 for a seven-course tasting menu.

Expect things like foie gras and chicken liver parfait with crisp chicken skin, smoked rainbow trout with dashi-infused daikon and horseradish, and Valrhona chocolate souffle with three tastes of raspberry.

Cooke and Law take over the site at 203-205 St Georges Road, Fitzroy North, on September 4 in time to give the place a makeover. Ryne will have a stone-topped bar made from railway sleepers, sand-blasted brick walls, walnut chairs and a private dining room.

They hope to open Ryne for dinner Tuesday to Saturday from early October.

Meanwhile, back in Southbank, the Atlantic Group has recruited executive chef Nick Mahlook (ex-Stokehouse and Stokehouse City) to take command.