So Frenchy, so cheap: Good Food’s verdict on Frenchie, where almost everything is $14

At 6.30pm on a Tuesday, the small vestibule in front of the host stand at Frenchie is packed. The dark staircase that leads up from Collins Street has a line of diners waiting to even get into the venue, where red velvet curtains surround the doorway to the dining room.

A young waiter in a chambray jumpsuit – prison chic, and the uniform of all the front of house staff – is doing their best to manage the melee of waiting patrons. Most have bookings, some are hopeful walk-ins, no one has anywhere to sit or stand without being in someone else’s way. It’s chaotic, to be sure, but most venues would kill for this problem: overflowing on a rainy Tuesday night.

The allure of Frenchie is multi-faceted, but the drawcard that really matters is simple: value. Yes, the room is moody and vibey, all red and black and blingy, with a huge video projection on the wall behind the bar of highly stylised beautiful people, like the perfume ads you see displayed near duty-free shops in international airports.

And yes, the menu is full of dishes that capture some of Melbourne’s current edible zeitgeist – a little bit French, a little bit playful, mostly snacky. These are all elements you can find some version of in lots of restaurants that don’t have people lined up to speak to a hostess. The difference at Frenchie is that everything costs $14.

Everything? Well, yes, practically everything. You can buy a bottle rather than one of the ($14) glasses of wine, and that will be more expensive. They do serve basic soft drinks, which cost less than $14. You can add fries to certain dishes for an extra $7. But everything else – the cocktails, the sparkling, the caviar bumps you’re offered from a cart once you get to your coveted seat, and everything on the menu from oysters (three per serve) to steak is $14.

You wouldn’t think such a simple formulation would make such a huge difference to the atmosphere in a room, but it does. There’s a giddiness to eating at Frenchie, a devil-may-care attitude that permeates the whole joint. Order whatever you want! Do the caviar bump! Drink three martinis! The amount of anxiety that $14 price tag alleviates is incalculable, but the relaxation it engenders is palpable.

Operators Julian Diprose and Lucas Boucly have been extremely smart about figuring out how to make this too-good-to-be-true economic equation work.

Dishes are easily executed: silky beetroot-cured salmon gravlax is sliced and put on a plate with a foamy green sorrel sauce; duck breast is grilled ahead of time, sliced to order, re-heated under a salamander, and drizzled with a l’orange sauce. Eggplant is cooked to a pleasing slump before service then reheated in slices, smothered in a goat’s cheese sauce and sprinkled with pistachio.

All of these things can be put together in the kitchen in seconds – your first dish will hit the table minutes after you place your order with the upbeat, let’s-get-going staff. Labour costs go down, table turnover goes up.

And while nothing blew my mind, taste-wise, most everything was completely acceptable. (That eggplant was actually really good, to be honest.) I wish the Parisian gnocchi, soft and filling, came without the truffle oil, but truffle oil is a quick, affordable, easy way to build flavour, and lots of people dig it. What I wish doesn’t matter; it’s a smart dish in this context.

The one place I felt my $14 wasn’t well spent was on a couple of desserts: a chocolate mousse that lacked any real depth or chocolate flavour, and a Basque cheesecake that similarly tasted bland and wasn’t nearly cheesy enough.

“Who cares?” my Gen-Z dinner companion said when I commented that the steak on the steak tartare was a little tougher than I’d prefer. “What do you expect? It’s $14!” And I suppose that’s the point.

The food here isn’t bad, by any stretch, and some of it is quite good. The cocktails − particularly that martini, made with a touch of absinthe, served in a beautiful coupe − are an absolute bargain. And the obvious collective relief of a room full of people who know they can have this much fun, without worrying too much about the damage when the bill comes, is downright exhilarating. Who cares if it’s not perfect? It’s $14!

In this moment of hand-wringing over the future of hospitality and an economic model that doesn’t really work for anyone any more – operators, customers and suppliers alike – I have to pay respect to a place that has thrown out the rules, done something different, and figured out how to make it work.

Frenchie isn’t for everyone, but it is for enough people to make a Tuesday night booking practically impossible. That’s a triumph in and of itself.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.