The gimmick at Bistro Guillaume is ... there is no gimmick.

Oh, I do like visiting the smart places at Crown. You never know quite what you're going to see. The restaurants are such egalitarian places, as befits a precinct where cash is a far more useful social currency than the old school tie. Everyone is welcome.

Take a busy Monday night in spring at Bistro Guillaume. There's the table of a respectable city lawyer and his family; another of glammed-up women on a girls' night; couples getting romantic; couples not; business groups, mainly men, although not exclusively. Nothing untoward, but in an expensive, plush but not stitched-up restaurant, where the maitre d' and sommelier are immaculately suited and tied, there's a certain respectable dress code maintained.

Without a hint of "'Allo 'allo" nonsense, Guillaume Brahimi's Crown restaurant is home to what is quite possibly Australia's best traditional French bistro food. Eating here is a reminder of why French cooking is the foundation stone of modern gastronomy. And anyone with the ready cash can enjoy it. Onion soup? No contest. Steak tartare? Best in town.

But spring in Melbourne is a challenging time for chefs. Menus need a foot in several camps in a town with citizens swimming at Middle Park on Saturday and braving a blizzard by Monday. For Daniel Southern, Brahimi's kitchen lieutenant-sur-Yarra, that means newer, lighter dishes (such as their sashimi or salade Nicoise) at the same time as an impossibly dark, mysterious and wondrous daube of wagyu beef cheek with mashed root vegetables.

But while BG's food may play to traditional notions of what works with certain prevailing temperatures, and the seasonality of produce, it rarely panders to traditional notions of heaviness or richness. Butter and cream are used sparingly; thickening of sauces, if required, steers clear of the traditional French practices that can leave you defeated after mere mouthfuls.

BG's gimmick is no-gimmick. Slowly, surely, Melburnians have come to understand that this place is simply about quality produce and cooking with good service rather than food that makes headlines with its innovation. There is also excellent wine service, if you can handle the mark-ups. Oysters come with sourdough and French butter finger sandwiches, a shallot/red wine vinegar dressing and the promise of utter freshness. Oysters as an opener are really not negotiable here. They are totemic.
Three different fish make up the sashimi offering, satellites of a little salad of shredded fennel, pickled ginger and coriander leaf: the reddest tuna, mother-of-pearl opaque kingfish and the most brilliantly orange ocean trout, all washed with a dressing of salty salmon roe, lime, soy, pickled ginger liquor and olive oil. Their Nicoise gets its acidity from pickled white anchovies in a rugby scrum with beans, red onion slivers, baby tomatoes, parsley, croutons, roasted red capsicum and quail eggs.

Then the mains. As well as the a la carte offerings you'd expect, there are always several shared options, and they are easily enough for three people, which makes something like Guillaume's roast Barossa chicken - which arrives in a copper pan before decamping to be boned by a waiter and served at the table - a bargain. Served with a sauce of finely sliced field mushrooms, shallot, fresh tomato dice and loads of basil, all light, golden and faintly porcini-flavoured, it is surely one of the great roast chickens of our land. Naturally, you eat it with serious pureed potato.

Desserts remain classic: poached pear, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice-cream from one of those fancy Pacojet machines - light yet unbelievably velvety and creamy - is hard to pass. Another of those "don't reinvent the wheel, just make it a perfect wheel" dishes. They're nearly all like that.

Bistro Guillaume
Crown Complex, Southbank, phone 9693 3888
Licensed
Cards AE DC MC V
Open daily noon-3pm; Mon-Sat 6-11pm and Sun 6-10pm
Entrees $16-$25
Main courses $25-$45
Desserts $18-$25