Eating Melbourne

There was also a creamy puree underneath, and a broth (again poured at the table) – forgive me but I can’t remember what they were. I loved the egg yolk with the truffles and the creamy puree, but the toasted rye reminded me too much of the mung beans my parents used to make us eat as a Healthy Snack back in the 80s. The matched wine was a 1997 Best’s Great Western Chardonnay – delicious – still with plenty of green apple crispness, and creamy without being too buttery.

Third course was calamari with black cream, cardamom and the tiniest baby carrots I’d ever seen:
(Apologies for the blurriness of some of these photos, by the way – the lights were very dim in there and I didn’t want to annoy other diners by using the flash. Nothing to do with having 10 glasses of wine, I SWEAR.)

I really liked this dish. The calamari were very tender and delicate. The black cream reminded me a little bit of Vegemite, but not in a bad way – there was a nice contrast between the juicy-sweet of the calamari, the salty cream and the crunchy carrots. The matched wine for this was, I’m pretty sure, not usually on the Vintage menu: a premier cru white Burgundy, Olivier Leflaive ‘Le Charmois’ 2001. I am drooling just remembering it.

Course number four was probably my favourite: slow cooked pork belly with scallops, fennel, eggplant and maple syrup.
Nomnomnomnom. The pork belly was so tender that it was practically melting. This dish was matched with a 2001 Crawford River Riesling – it had that only a tiny bit of the kerosene-y scent of an aged riesling, still plenty of fruit and zip.

And the food kept coming. Course number five was very unusual – cool climate vegies with a cocoa and coffee powder and cream. “It’s like cookies and cream with vegetables,” remarked my partner, and it was.

Dan Hunter seems to be quite enamoured of sweet/savoury juxtapositions; many of his dishes feature combinations of things that don’t sound like they’d work, and yet there you find yourself, scoffing them down. The matched wine for this was a 1998 Riddoch Shiraz from Coonawarra, and you know, I think it made the dish work even better by adding another peppery savoury note.

At the halfway point, I was still feeling good. The dishes were just the right size – enough that you got a few mouthfuls, but not so much that you couldn’t get through it all.

Course six was certainly out there. A chlorophyll-smeared plate was dotted with blobs of bone marrow and several different kinds of mushrooms, and then sprinkled with a few pine nuts:
arent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}">I couldn’t quite decide whether I liked this one. The mushrooms were certainly very very tasty, especially when put with just a tiny sliver of marrow; but you had to be careful not to mistake one of the marrow blobs for a mushroom and take a big fatty mouthful (as my partner did) – the lighting was really not very bright! I think upon reflection that I liked the flavours, but having the plate covered with green goo was a little too weird for me.
The matched wine was a 1988 Chateau Chasse-Spleen from Bordeaux.

Course seven, while a meat course, was almost a segue into dessert. Roast pigeon was teamed with tiny baby beetroot, white chocolate powder, and rose petals:
At first bite, I thought “this is too sweet”. And then I took a sip of the matched wine – 1999 Best’s Pinot Meunier – and it all completely made sense and I loved it. If you go there and have this dish, you MUST have a glass of the matching wine with it.

Course eight, and we’re now officially into dessert. Apple, triple cream, chamomile and caramel:
The little “twigs” were actually like little spiced grissini. This was a really beautiful winter dessert. It was matched with Primitivo Quiles Moscatel from Alicante, Spain.

Course nine. Starting to get pretty full now, and am hoping at this point that the desserts stay light instead of getting all chocolatey or cheesecakey. Fortunately they do – rhubarb with licorice, almond and citrus:
(again, apologies for the photo. Dim light. Not wine. Promise.)
The licorice flavour was in the syrup, and was too overpowering for my partner’s tastes. I quite liked it though. There was no wine match for this course.

The final course was a sort of pistachio sponge cake with delicious chocolate hazelnut icecream, crunchy shards of honeycomb, and pistachio and chocolate crumbs:
Still not a heavy dessert, although I struggled to get through it! I loved the icecream and the honeycomb especially. The matched wine was Sanchez Romate Cream Sherry.

All in all, a pretty stunning meal. The staff were absolutely perfect – very knowledgeable, genuinely friendly, and attentive without being suffocating. I asked them for a list of the matched wines at the end of the meal (as there was no way I could have remembered everything), and they had already prepared for us a typed list of every course with its matching wine – bless them.

The bill – gulp – came to $638 for two people (plus tip) – I also had a cup of tea to finish, while my partner simply had to have another glass of the Best’s Pinot Meunier. Certainly not a cheap meal but very memorable, and therefore excellent value.