Côte Basque revives a 70-year Melbourne dining room

Chef Andrew McConnell has opened Côte Basque, a European grill inspired by the Basque coast, inside 25 Crossley Street in Melbourne's CBD, a dining room with 70 years of restaurant history behind it.

It is McConnell's first new restaurant since Gimlet, the address that helped define his Trader House group alongside Cutler & Co and Cumulus. The address itself has carried three restaurants since 1954, when brothers Leo and Vildo Pellegrini opened an Italian cafe there. Nino Pangrazio and the late Sisto Malaspina bought the business in 1974, then Becco took over the room in 1996 and ran for nearly three decades before closing in 2024. McConnell's Trader House, which he runs with partner Jo McGann, secured the lease soon after.

A heritage room gets a Basque accent

The dining room has a beautiful soul that reflects its history, McConnell says of the Becco address.

"One of the most important heritage restaurant sites in the city," McConnell called it when the lease was announced, adding that the dining room "has a beautiful soul that reflects its history." The design keeps the green terrazzo floor, the stepped dining room and the street-level windows that regulars associated with Becco, rather than stripping the space back to a blank slate.

What changed is the kitchen. A wood-fired grill and wood oven now anchor the menu, built around a beef supply McConnell has spent time developing: a cross between David Blackmore's wagyu and Galician rubia gallega cattle, dry-aged in-house for a month before it reaches the grill.

A 100-seat room built around fire

Côte Basque seats 100 inside, with more room outside and a private dining space upstairs. The bar leans into the same coastal reference as the kitchen, pouring a Porto Tonico of white port, Calvados and tonic alongside a house vodka martini finished with Lustau vermut.

The restaurant landed on Broadsheet's Hot List within weeks of opening, a quick verdict for a room that spent decades under one name before Trader House inherited it. It joins a strong year for Melbourne openings that also includes Petit Crenn's new outpost on Collins Street. For a site that has changed hands only three times since the 1950s, Côte Basque now carries the weight of continuing rather than simply opening.