Eating Melbourne

OK, so this was supposed to be a review of Quay, which I’ve been itching to visit for months. Alas, couldn’t convince the partner to go for such an expensive lunch this time. (Next time, Gadget… next time…)
So, upon the recommendations of my ex-Sydneysider brother and Time Out Sydney, we wound up at the Bentley instead.

We rocked up at around 12.30pm on a Friday – I called first, expecting it to be busy given the Time Out award. “Yes, we should be able to fit you in,” they said… sure enough you could have shot a cannon through the place with no fear of hitting anyone. (We were the only table till one other pair arrived about 1.30pm, and that was it till we left around 2.30pm.  What the?? Is the GFC hitting Sydney dining more than Melbourne?)

We chose the awarded $50 “tapas” lunch menu. It was supposed to be 10 courses but I only counted seven. (Perhaps they were counting some of the components as multiple courses? I don’t think a piece of jamon counts as a course, personally. Mind you, seven courses for $50 is still decent value.)

The first course arrived promptly: Serrano jamon wrapped around two forky skewer things, and a spoonful of kingfish ceviche with pickled daikon and yuzu mayonnaise:

The jamon was great, although I guess there’s not much you could do to stuff jamon up.   The ceviche I found a bit too acidic, I thought the vinegar overpowered the fish a little. My partner liked it though.

Next up we had a smoked eel parfait, with seaweed, white soy cream and soy crisps:

A beautiful looking dish, I loved the presentation. It did however taste exactly like kabana (or cabanossi, depending on where you grew up) – not unpleasant, but very reminiscent of 80s hors d’oeuvres. Just add toothpick, cheddar cube and a pickled onion.

Next we had teeny little baby squids with squid ink rice and green chilli:

The little baby squids (how fiddly must they have been to clean?!) still had their long tentacles attached, and were very juicy, not chewy at all. Personally I didn’t love the squid ink rice and the green chilli together though. The rice was sort of oily and rich, while the chilli was very tart and brisk – usually contrast is good but in this case I found it a bit clashy, for my tastes anyway.

Next up, I think this was one of the “two course” courses – a cucumber and herb gazpacho, with a piece of chorizo wrapped in crispy potato on a blob of harissa:

Loved the gazpacho flavour, although I thought it could have used a teensy bit more salt so that it didn’t get drowned out by the flavour punch of the chorizo with harissa.

We then move on to the slow-cooked egg with pork bubble and pea soil:

Oh. My. God. I absolutely loved this. Apparently they cook the egg in a water bath for an hour and a half at 60 degrees, which gives it a completely bizarre but intriguing slow gooey texture. It looks mostly like a soft-poached egg, but when you cut into the yolk it doesn’t run all over the plate – it just oooooooozes. The “pork bubble” is a few strips of very light and bubbly pork crackling; and then there’s the bed of Kermit-green pea “soil”, which adds just enough freshness to an otherwise quite rich dish.

The final savoury course was a pressed lamb shoulder with a tagine sauce and chickpeas with dill, accompanied by chickpea chips:

This was delicious, the lamb was slow cooked to the falling-off-the-bone stage and went beautifully with the Moroccan-spiced sauce. I also loved the chickpea chips, and got to eat my partner’s as well – he didn’t like them, thought they tasted like Chiko Rolls. (They did, a little bit – but I secretly love Chiko Rolls.)

We then asked for a break to finish our wine before dessert; we had a bottle of 2006 Punch chardonnay from the Yarra Valley, which I hadn’t tried before but really enjoyed. I found it very refined and elegant. (Note to self: try more Punch wines.) I had wanted to order the Cullen chardonnay, but couldn’t bring myself to pay $144 for a wine that’s $60 at Winestar – I guess that’s Sydney wine list pricing for you though.

Dessert was a scoop of chocolate ganache, sprinkled with salt and surrounded with orange oil.

I don’t usually go much on chocolate desserts, but the orange made it very refreshing.

Service was attentive, as you’d expect when you’re the only table. The waitress however was not able to give a wine recommendation, and instead fetched the sommelier (who did arrive promptly at the table, and recommended the Punch, so thumbs up).

The Bentley advertises its menu as “tapas”. I don’t think it really is. Tapas should be a bit more snacky and share-able, and probably a bit more rustic (and a bit more Spanish, come to that). The Bentley is more like fine dining, albeit a more casual style than my recent degustation adventures (Attica and The Royal Mail). That said, it’s really very good value for what it is, even if the wine list is a bit pricey (but that’s Sydney for you).

Royal Mail Hotel, 98 Parker St, Dunkeld. www.royalmail.com.au

My very thoughtful brothers had given me a gift voucher for accommodation at the Royal Mail for my birthday back in March, knowing that I had been dying to go there to try chef Dan Hunter’s 10-course degustation menu.

To get both a dinner reservation and accommodation, you need to book a few weeks in advance if you want to go on a weekend – I called early June and was told they were booked out on Saturday nights until August(!). So we took Friday off work and drove down.

We were seated for dinner at 7.30pm and were offered a choice of the “Menu Omnivore” ($150) or “Menu Vegetarian” ($110). We chose the Omnivore – natch. We were also offered shaved truffles as an addition to the second course, and of course, when someone offers you truffles, you say “hell yes”. (They didn’t tell us how much extra it was, but we overheard a different waitress telling another table that it was $20 extra a head.)

The wine list at Royal Mail, developed by their wine director Lok Thornton, is something else. It comes out in a leather-bound folder, 72 pages thick, chock full of an incredible range of local, vintage and international wines. I think you’d need a week’s worth of dinners (with at least four or five boozy companions) to do the thing any justice at all. (You can download a PDF of it here.)

Fortunately there are three matched-wine options: “Village” (local wines) for $80, “Vintage” (a mix of local and international wines from the older depths of the cellar) for $135, and “International” for $275. I was a little hesitant to go the matched wine route (after a less-than-impressive experience at Press Club), but our waiter assured me it was the best way to experience the food – and I am very glad I acquiesced! We chose the Vintage option and loved it.

The meal began with house-made sourdough bread rolls, a choice of rye or whole-wheat, with smoked butter. I tried really hard not to eat too much bread (in anticipation of the 10 courses coming) but it was goooood. Our first wine was champagne: Philipponat Reserve Rose NV.

The first course arrived: sardine fillets with jamon, teeny tiny radishes and a smoked tuna broth:
The broth was poured ceremoniously into the dish at the table. (I do like a sense of theatre.) The flavours of this dish were very delicate – not overly fishy as sardines sometimes can be – and very fresh and light tasting. The matched wine for this dish was a dry sherry: Sanchez Romate Palo Cortado.

Next up – truffley goodness! An egg yolk hidden beneath toasted rye sprouts and lovely shavings of truffle:

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.