Hey there. Welcome to this episode of My Mate In. This podcast is all about really great places to go for food or a drink. It's not critical reviews. It's good vibes only about places that my mates really enjoy.

This episode is a side quest episode. In side quest episodes, I talk to you about a place that I tried myself recently and that I really enjoyed. Today, I want to talk to you about Flint. Flint is a restaurant on the Fitzroy side of Smith Street in Melbourne. Here, the focus is on fire.

The food is flamed or smoked. Think charred meats and smoked fish. This is the kind of place that you go if you want a really nice fancy experience that's really relaxed and comfortable. The dining room is dark and minimalist. One wall is well lit and showcases a row of pickle jars of all different types.

Flint meals tend to feature a pickled or fermented element. The space is rectangular with seating at low tables along one wall. The other long wall has a bar and bar seating. Along the front wall, there's low seating just inside a window that looks out onto busy Smith Street. At the back of the restaurant, most of the space is taken up by the kitchen.

There's an opening for some stairs and then a small number of high tables, and that's where we sat, at a high table right next to the kitchen in the back corner. The kitchen is also pretty minimal, drawing attention to the large grill. The grill has wood fire at the bottom and then multiple levels of racks above the flames for cooking and smoking. When you first go into Flint, it takes a little while for your eyes to adjust, and then they do adjust to the darkness. And on this occasion, that's when I noticed a large trout hanging from the grill.

Above the kitchen is an opening into another room. It's a cutout in the wall. When we arrived, it seemed like it might be another kitchen space or preparation space because there were no chefs doing prep in the dining room kitchen. But I'm going to come back to this mystery space above the kitchen later. The waiter/bartender talked us through the menu.

It was a really useful overview of the intention of the menu, and they suggested roughly how much we should order to share between the two of us. The menu is also minimal and focused. It's a selection of fewer meals done really well. Most of the things on the menu are intended to be shared, including the mains. I noticed that most of the starter or entree options feature some kind of seafood.

Although I'm always open to suggestions from staff about how much to order, something I've learned is to order about two thirds of what is suggested if I want to just feel full by the end of the meal. The times I don't follow this rule is when I want to try all of the things on a menu and expect to feel excessively full by the end of the experience. Rather than ordering multiple starters and a main each, we decided to order two mains to share. After we placed our order, the head chef and owner, chef Nicki, came down the stairs next to our table and into the kitchen and started to prepare our mains. Chef Nicki is awesome.

She has a really relaxed vibe. On the day that we visited, she was wearing a cap and casual dark tone clothes, apron, and boots. Chef Nicki moved around the dark kitchen and oven fire confidently and effortlessly, meanwhile, having the occasional banter with a guest. After we finished our meals, she came over and had a chat, asked our names and how our meal was. Our meals were excellent.

We had a char grilled porterhouse to share. This meal is about $82. It's a single large cut, sliced to share. It's pink and soft inside and black and crunchy on the outside. It's served on a small amount of rich, creamy garlic aioli type of sauce. Sorry, chef Nicki.

Not a critic or a chef myself, might have gotten that totally wrong. And a small amount of pickled cabbage comes on the side. Each element individually was delightful, but put together, it was awesome. Their pickled cabbage gave the meal a zingy quality that was really pleasing. Don't be put off by the price tag of the porterhouse.

Other high end restaurants will offer a small, high quality cut for about $40 to $50 So just imagine that you've ordered two of those. Our second main was called Carrot Carrot. The waiter said it's a favorite and kind of a signature dish at Flint. The Carrot Carrot dish was about $22. This dish is char grilled carrot, cut and prepared in three to four centimeter length and arranged in multiple small towers, topped with dollops of what I think may have been the same aioli sauce from the porterhouse. And all of that was on top of a carrot puree.

The Carrot Carrot dish is rich and has a lot of levels going on. We were definitely satisfied with the taste and quality of the food and left feeling really full. Remember before I mentioned that opening above the kitchen? Partway through our meal, a group of people came in and walked up the stairs between our table and the kitchen. That's when we realized there's a private dining space mezzanine that overlooks the kitchen.

Very cool. If you enjoy a drink, there is a solid but brief wine and cocktails menu. We got a tempranillo, which was a great red to go with the flamed smokey aromas in the restaurant and flavors in the meal. The wines were about 17 to $20 ish per glass. We also got a fermented blueberry and gin cocktail.

It was about $25. It was a really pleasing pink color and actually not sweet. It was salty and dry, and it came without any garnish. Flint is a relaxed, effortlessly cool, minimalist experience where you'll get exceptional food prepared and presented without any unnecessary distractions. Check it out.