Eating Melbourne

Rae’s Restaurant at Balgownie Estate, Melba Hwy, Yarra Glen. Ph (03) 9730 0774

Have you ever been hot-air-ballooning before? I hadn’t. You have to get up early. As in, long-before-sparrows-fart, may-as-well-have-just-stayed-up-late, early. Having anticipated this when giving J a hot-air-balloon ride over the Yarra Valley for his birthday, I’d booked a room at Balgownie Estate, so as not to have to drive all the way to the balloon check-in from Melbourne. (Mind you, we still had to get up at 3.45am.)

Anyway, we checked into the Mercure Balgownie resort the night before, and decided to have an early-ish dinner at Rae’s Restaurant which is just next to the Balgownie cellar door.

Nice view out over the vineyard and hills; white starched tablecloths; menu comprising handpicked produce from the estate’s own vegetable garden. Looking good, right?

Until we sat down – with a thump! The chairs are too low for the tables!!

As my pixelated dining companion demonstrates, the chairs are so low that one’s elbows are way below table height, giving one the feeling of being a little kid at the Grown-Ups’ Table. Not ideal.

We moved on to perusing the wine list. The very short wine list, comprising only Balgownie wines (and mostly current vintage), with the exception of a couple of white varieties that Balgownie doesn’t make at all – a riesling and a semillon, if I remember correctly. I was a bit surprised by this, given the $30+ price of main courses – the other high-end winery restaurants I’ve been to (most notably Ten Minutes by Tractor, and Herzog in NZ) have had fairly extensive lists. Others such as Daniel Alps at Strathlynn (in TAS), while focusing on the estate’s own wines, will at least offer a large range of back vintages.

We chose a glass of the Balgownie Estate Black Label Sparkling Shiraz 2008 to start with. I don’t usually go much on sparkling reds but I really liked this, so much so I bought three bottles to take home the next day. It’s just the right amount of sweetness, not sickly like a Lambrusco, but just sweet enough to go pleasantly with the bubbles.

As a starter, I ordered the “warm Romano onion compote tart, basil, goat’s cheese, anchovies and olive jam” ($18). Sounds like a few too many ingredients going on, I thought to myself, but the waiter assured me that this was the most popular entree dish.

I was right; there was too much going on in this dish. What was with the eggcup filled with watermelon granita and pesto?! What was with the three random green olives?  I think this could have been a pleasant simple dish if they’d taken out about half of the ingredients.

By this time we’d finished our glasses of sparkling, and I ordered a bottle of Balgownie Estate pinor noir. (I think this is the only restaurant where I’ve ever been able to say “I’ll have a bottle of the pinot noir” and not have to supply any additional information. Aside from perhaps the local pizza joint.)  The waitress returned to the table with the bottle; presented it to J, not to me, even though I’d ordered it; and then unscrewed the top, poured two full glasses immediately (no tasting), put the bottle back on the table and left. A different waiter returned a few minutes later with a saucer to put underneath the bottle. Hmm.

The main course arrived while I was in the bathroom, so please ignore the broccolini on my plate – this was a side dish that J served up before I had a chance to take the pic:

I’d ordered “confit of duck leg on a bed of onion jam and a cantaloupe mocha jus with candied turnips” ($34). The whole thing was sticky, jammy and sweet. The “cantaloupe mocha jus” reminded me of 1980s apricot chicken, and I wasn’t a fan of the presentation, being all smeared right up the sides of the dish.

I am not sure which bit was the candied turnips – the brown slices that look like beetroot, or the green thing? If it was the brown slices, then I have no idea what the green thing was. It tasted kind of like pear. But why was it bright green?? HOW did they make it bright green?!

I didn’t eat much of my main course – fortunately the entree was pretty filling – and the waitress cleared my plate without asking whether anything was wrong. I’ve always thought that this is the truest indicator of whether or not a restaurant is serious about their food: if you don’t eat it, do they ask why not?

As fun as it was to sit at the Grown-Ups’ Table, we decamped to the adjoining lounge area for dessert. This is a lovely spot to sit at twilight and watch the bunnies hop across the lawn.

None of the sweets particularly appealed, so we chose the cheese platter ($30), which arrived promptly:

The cheeses were quite a nice selection, as far as Victorian cheeses go: Yarra Valley Dairy Black Savourine, Gippsland Blue, Tarago River Jensen’s Washed Rind and Milawa Camembert. The crackers were a bit naff for a $30 cheese plate, but maybe that’s just me being overly picky, given the meal up to that point.

Sadly, I have to also make mention of the music that played in the restaurant throughout our meal. Celine Dion, Leo Sayer and the Bee Gees are fine artists, but surely a fine-dining restaurant is not the right context? Same goes for “Holiday”-era Madonna.

Overall, while we enjoyed our stay at Balgownie, this meal was not one I’d choose to repeat. You’re better off saving your money, driving 15 minutes to Healesville, and having a great pizza at Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander.

(The
ballooning was great, by the way.)

It’s a rainy, freezing, depressing Monday in Melbourne, and you’re hosting interstate visitors. What to do?! Bugger off to the Yarra Valley for lunch, that’s what.

The Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander winery is on the main street of Healesville, and it’s a huge barn of a place comprising a bistro, cellar door, bakery, pizzeria, cheese room and coffee roastery. So yeah, pretty much foodie heaven. I’ve been there a couple of times before, usually at lunchtime on a weekend when you’ll have to wait an hour for a table… I can happily say it’s much easier to get a seat on a rainy Monday. (I hereby give you permission to chuck a sickie to go. I’ll write you a note for your boss.)

There were four of us, so we got to do my very favourite type of lunch: Let’s Order Way Too Much Food and Put It All In The Middle To Share.

Their menu consists of Antipasti, Pizza, Not Pizza (cute), Pots (i.e. casseroles and tagines) and assorted sides. We ordered a mix of everything, to be brought out in no particular order.

The pizzas are really, really, really good. Lovely crispy thin sourdough bases. We had the puttanesca, with olives, Spanish anchovies, capers and mozzarella:

and also the plain old margerita – mozzarella, tomato and basil:

Mmmmmm… pizza…
Moving on, the mushroom and manchego aranci were cute little mini balls of nom. I only have a picture of one of them because I wasn’t fast enough with the camera and everyone pinched them out of the dish too fast, but you get about six per serve:

There was a great little pocket of melty gooey manchego cheese in the middle.

There was also the eggplant and pumpkin tagine with giant couscous and labne:

This was not bad, although could have been a bit more spicy. (And personally I feel “giant couscous” is misleading. I wanted couscous the size of a fist! This was just “Slightly Larger Couscous”. … OK, I’m being silly.)

The house cut chips with aioli were fine:

To drink, we had one of their house wines, the Giant Steps Gladysdale Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008. Really delicious – juicy and fleshy without being too over-the-top. I was vaguely irked by them effectively charging corkage for it though, considering you’re drinking it right there in their winery. (It’s $45 if you walk over to the cellar door counter and buy it, but $54 to drink it there. Yes, I know they have to wash the glasses… but still. It’s their own wine!)

For dessert, I’d saved room for the Portuguese tart, which was to die for on my last visit. This time it was less exciting, I think because it wasn’t warm? The pastry had congealed a bit. Last time it was fresher out of the oven, perhaps. Still really good custard.

I also had an espresso with their own roasted coffee. They give you a double ristretto (with 20g of coffee) – zing!

Alas, on this occasion I did not get to attack the cheese room. Which just means that now I have an excuse to go again soon.