food

Leaving the Royal Mail was a wrenching task, but it had to be done. Sydney was too far away for a single day’s drive, so we’d planned to overnight in Beechworth. And as it happens, The Age Good Food Guide’s Best New Country Restaurant 2010 is located there…

The drive itself was quite manageable, and we enjoyed spectacular views of the Grampians only a few minutes out of Dunkeld. But to be honest we were quite stuffed by this stage and the meal was building up to be a letdown. Arriving with enough time to get ready for dinner but not enough to explore the town, we walked the short distance to Provenance and were immediately captivated by its location in a beautifully restored bank building. Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion caused by eating so much good food for a week, perhaps the long driving, or perhaps the shortcomings of the restaurant itself, but we did not enjoy this meal anywhere near as much as we expected.

Opting for the degustation again, we were very pleased with the first course: confit baby artichokes, buffalo mozzarella, pangrattato and tomato butter. The tomato butter held together the delicate flavours of the other ingredients well, making for a pleasingly light starter.

Next up: roasted broccoli, broccoli puree, crisp pig fat, Sicilian anchovies, lemon, fried garlic. The roasted broccoli was a large horizontal slice through the whole head, gently cooked with soft texture. A good match for the other ingredients, though the roasted garlic was pretty rustically done. Matched with one of my favourite Australian chardonnays, 2006 Phillip Shaw No.11 from Orange.

From here though it was rather uninspiring, the execution not quite matching the concept. House made orecchiette, broad beans, proscuitto, chilli, Pecorino. Brined quail, compressed watermelon, pickled watermelon rind, walnuts, candied olives, watermelon sauce. Then a winning dish of confit duck leg, roasted breast, chestnut puree, candied parsnips, parsley and lemon salad with a shiraz grenache from Corbieres in France. Finally the dessert course of strawberries, pressed green tea cake, scorched pistachios, marmalade cream, strawberry cordial, jelly, paper and powder.

All nice stuff, and yet… the service left a bit to be desired, too. Of our three waiters only one was very good, one indifferent and the other verging on rude. Again perhaps we wouldn’t have been so critical if we had not experienced such high standards in the previous week, but it did leave a bit to be desired. Most disappointing was the wine matching. None of the choices were bad, but with only a $50 charge for six matched wines the house had no option but to opt for less subtlety given the price. The main wine list here is small but well chosen, and I think Provenance could benefit immensely by adopting the Royal Mail concept of two different matched wine options at different prices. With great wine the food would definitely shine brighter.

The next two days in Dunkeld were magical, better than either of us could have dreamed. The Royal Mail Hotel is a haven for those who want to just bliss out for a while, which is exactly what we did on the following two days. I’m so glad they only had Mountain View rooms available, because they are much more private and relaxing than the Garden View rooms (which could more accurately be called Carpark View).

There is still a pub attached to the complex, though as Strop the local told us The Royal Mail is now a pub attached to a restaurant rather than the other way round. Which is great for us food tourists, but it has apparently put a few of the locals’ noses out of joint. Not that we minded: the day after the big meal we started with lunch from the bar menu (which features wagyu burgers, whole baked fish, corned wagyu, etc) and then settled in for the afternoon with a few wines, vintage champagne, a fine Mersault over dinner then a late night back in the pub, chatting.

Chatting in fact was the highlight of the stay, not just between ourselves but also with the staff. During the big meal the night before we had several different waiters, and we saw all of the them again the next day in more casual mode. They were extremely friendly, and Jeremy the sommelier even took us on a fantastic tour of the cellar and looked after us later in the day when we wanted to splash out on a couple of better wines. Brendan the barman is a treasure, and we also got on well with Clint, Ainslie, Katie and Dale too. They all seem to work insane hours though: we dubbed the kitchen staff “the undead” because they were ALWAYS in the kitchen, from early in the morning to late at night.

There is another dining area at the Royal Mail apart from the main restaurant, more casual but still turning out superb food from the same kitchen. In any other place it would be a fine restaurant in its own right, here it is “merely” The Bistro. Over the two nights we dined there we shared some delicious dishes, including: pigeon pie; braised octopus; roast chicken; slow-cooked lamb with stewed eggplant, beans and potato; and some terrific jamon iberico, the Rolls Royce of hams, served simply on tomato bread. It’s important to have an alternative to the deluxe menu if you want to stay a while, and the food here is done so well it’s easy to spend a few days in gastronomic heaven at any level (even the bar menu is great).

On our final day we at last managed to take advantage of property’s bushwalks, going for a long stroll along the river towards the original Mount Sturgeon homestead. Reason to return: there are seven other walks, some of which take you into the Grampians proper. Next time we will definitely take advantage of these, both for the exercise and to gain enough appetite for more of that great food and wine 😀

royalmail.com.au

Spanish chefs have been at the forefront of a gastronomic revolution in past decade or two. Ferran Adria’s El Bulli restaurant in northern Spain led the charge, bringing new scientific processes to cooking to create mind-blowingly inventive flavour and texture combinations such as “sardines on toast” ice cream, bacon foam, seaweed gels and other oddities. There may have been a mis-step or three along the way, but there is no denying than the Spanish new wave has captured the food world’s imagination in a very deep way. For ordinary mortals, you would have more chance of marrying the Pope than ever scoring a table at El Bulli.

But Adria has not been the only avant-garde Spanish chef of note. Andoni Aduriz of Mugaritz took note of the new techniques but also respected the produce at the heart of all food. With a strong focus on kitchen garden produce and top quality ingredients (and yes, lots of pretty flowers) he uses new methods not for their own sake, but to enhance the dining experience without making the diner feel like he is eating on the moon. To some, Mugaritz is even better than El Bulli because of this philosophy, and it has been voted repeatedly one of the top ten restaurants in the world by Restaurant magazine.

Why such a detour into modern Spanish food when I’m meant to be writing about a restaurant in the tiny Victorian country town of Dunkeld? Well it’s chef, Dan Hunter, was head pan-rattler at Mugaritz for two years before being lured back to Australia to set up the Royal Mail Hotel restaurant. This was a coup for its owners that, quite literally, put Dunkeld on the map: it is now truly a foodie destination that should rank up there with El Bulli and Mugaritz. The Royal Mail Hotel restaurant has won Australian Gourmet Traveller’s Country Restaurant of the Year award for two years running, and we could definitely see why when we dined there. It’s hard to conceive how I will ever eat a better meal again – unless I go back there for the new season’s menu, of course!

The only slightly sour note, for now anyway, is that the dining room itself is somewhat lacking in ambience. It’s not separated completely from the other dining area, and the tables are arranged as if we’re all watching a show, except there is no centrepiece to focus on (the kitchen is off to one side). We felt quite exposed when first shown to our table, though happily we did have a side view of the kitchen and its artists meticulously tweezing their creations into place. Fortunately this feeling subsided after a while, but later conversations with staff confirmed that plans are afoot to redesign the room to make it more special.

Before launching into the food itself, a comment on the wine list. It is legendary, running to over 8000 bottles listed on more than 70 pages. Picking the matched wine option is a no-brainer, though here they have two different levels of wine matches (at different price points). This is an excellent idea which I would love to see copied widely, as it allows you to tailor the experience to your palate (and your wallet!). We opted for one of each level to give even more wine variety, and sommelier Jeremy’s choices were truly inspired. It was fascinating for me to compare the very good (and often aged) Australian wines in the lesser bracket with the superb (usually French) versions in the prestige list.

So to the food, with wine matches listed below:

To start: a glass each of Philipponat reserve rose champagne – the same for both wine series because it’s very good.

Sardine, jamon, radish, smoked bonito – two small fillets of sardines with the other ingredients in small quanitities, the broth it comes in poured simultaneously by two waiters at our table. A great theatrical touch. Both wines series featured the same Sanchez Romate palo cortado sherry from Spain.

Sugar snap pea, soured milk, spearmint, sashimi – a small mound of delicately crunchy peas with miniscule spearmint leaves carefully placed throughout, on the other side of the plate a white smear of soured milk beneath a few dark red slices of sashimi. Kristen asked at one stage what I thought the sashimi was, and I assumed it was a high quality tuna. But I was wrong: after we’d finished a waiter asked us what we thought the sashimi was. It turned out to be watermelon somehow modified to give it a chewy texture, yet in hindsight it did have a distinct watermelon flavour. This was the first “wow” dish that really got us thinking about what was to come! The local wine match was 2009 Grosset Semillon/sauvignon blanc; the French version 2006 Lucien Crochet ‘La Chene Marchand’ from Sancerre. The same grape varieties, but much more minerality and depth in the French wine.

Egg yolk, toasted rye, asparagus, yeast – a crunchy dish with the egg yolk intact on arrival, but of course it spreads throughout the dish once you start eating. Rich, creamy, eggy, bready, crunchy, delicious. The local wine was 1997 Best’s chardonnay, the French version 2001 Leroy ‘Auxey-Duresses’ white burgundy.

Pork and prawn, artichoke, fennel, rocket – a more ‘conventional’dish rich in flavour, each element perfectly in place. Served with 2003 Crawford River Riesling (local) or 2006 Domaine Ostertag ‘Muenchberg’ Riesling. This was my first ever grand cru Riesling and it was spectacular: musky, oily, and a top match. We both raved about this dish to our waiters when the plates were cleared, and their professionally deferential attitude started to soften. We even began to get some top ups of our glasses, especially of that divine Alsace riesling 😀

Yellowfin tuna, onions, nori, garlic – a magically cooked cylinder tuna with a glassy texture, even all through apart from a faint browning on the outside. Back to the chardonnays with this.

Eel, beef tendon, kohl rabi, potato – another cracker. Beef tendon is found in Chinese cookery but I doubt it’s ever as gelatinously perfect as this dish. Kristen found it hard to get her mind around the idea but I suspended thought and just focussed on the rich flavour and sticky texture. The tiny balls of potato were brilliant. Served with 2008 Dehasa Gago tempranillo (lesser level) or 2006 Acustic celler ‘brao’ Grenache/carignan from Spain (prestige)

Pigeon, beetroot, white chocolate, rose – one of the top three dishes of the night for me, the moist and rare sliced pigeon breast an inspired match to the white chocolate crumbs underneath, the beetroot giving a pleasing sweet offset. Served with 2005 Best’s pinot meuniere (a rare drop as a still table wine, and excellent too) or 1999 Laurent ‘Beane vielles vignes’ 1er cru from Burgundy. Nice top-ups of both these wines as we took a long time to eat this dish 😉

Apple, triple cream, chamomile, caramel – I don’t really remember this in detail, but surely it was grand. Served with Primitivo Quiles moscatel from Spain (lesser level) or 2007 Jaboulet muscat beames de venise from the Rhone Valley. The Jaboulet was much lighter than I expect from this style of wine, and I was pleased that Jeremy confirmed it was an unusual example.

Rhubarb, liquorice, almond, citrus – the only dish that didn’t seem to match up to the standards of the other courses, though it served its purpose as a palate cleanser as it was decidedly tart. No wine served with this – a good call.

Pistachio, hazelnut, honeycomb, chocolate – some arcane magic managed to put more pistachio flavour into every morsel than seems humanly possible. We were melting at the table over this one, barely noticing this fine Sanchez Romate cream sherry served with both. A brilliant send off.

The menu changes seasonally at The Royal Mail, and if I had the budget I’d like to eat here four times a year. Of course it is seriously expensive food (and wine), and that’s before you consider the cost of actually getting here. But it’s worth it.

The next day was a complete change of speed, and most welcome too. Rather than mounting up for another extended drive, we merely travelled half an hour to the southern suburbs to stay with Joel’s parents, Helen and Jim. It was a lovely and very hot day, so after a light lunch and a tiki tour of the area Kristen and I went for a short walk then lay on the beach for a few hours. Brilliant. The evening saw a barbeque in the backyard, followed by slightly more booze than any of us expected… a top night for all!

We hit the road again the next day, with the modest aim of reaching the historic township of Robe on the south-eastern coast of South Australia. Starting late, we took the scenic route through McLaren Vale and the southern Adelaide Hills – both beautiful areas – before heading to the ferry crossing at Wellington. The day started very hot but by this time a change was in the air, and searing winds whipped the surface of the Murray as we crossed.

Within half an hour it was raining, windy and cold, which seemed quite appropriate as we entered the windswept coastal wetland region of the Coorong. Or as we variously called it: the Stinklands, or the Badlands. We couldn’t wait to get out of there. Apparently the foul stench in the air is only a recent phenomenon caused by too little water flowing down the Murray River system, but I noted there are virtually no settlements for almost a hundred kilometres along this coastline. It’s a famous bird sanctuary, and the sturdy shrubs that hugged the ground suggest it’s not hospitable for much else, though it might be much more scenic on a bright sunny day.

We overnighted in Robe, and as the weather was awful we decided to stay in our hotel the whole time. Fortunately the Caledonian Inn is a delightful gem originally built in the 1850s, and our room upstairs was charmingly off-centre yet comfortable. There’s a good restaurant onsite too, and while Kristen’s half lobster turned out to be very disappointing all the other elements of the meal were excellent. After dinner we had some random chats with locals, one of whom had just returned from a gourmet tour of Sydney the week before (Est, Sean’s Panorama, Pier, etc). It was a pleasant surprise to know that others were keen on doing our kind of journey.

The next day’s weather was still crappy, so we ditched our plans to head to Dunkeld via Mount Gambier and headed straight for Penola. This township is the service centre for the Coonawarra wine region, somewhere I have wanted to visit for many years. It is much more scenic than I expected: for some reason I had always presumed it was surrounded by sparse desert or bush, so it was a great surprise to find lush green pasture for kilometres around. The township itself is very pleasant, and we spent quite a bit of time browsing the excellent historical displays in the tourist office.

Naturally I was keen to visit a few vineyards (but only a couple!), and I chose Bowen Estate while Kristen plumped for Hollick. The latter was an inspired choice, because the cellar door host at Bowen told us our desired lunching venue was closed on Tuesdays. However there was a restaurant at Hollicks if we were keen on a bit of fine dining…. Natch. After a run through all their wines (the Wrattonbully shiraz is a great buy) we were taken upstairs to our table for a good meal overlooking the vineyards. Knowing we were going to eat the Meal Of The Trip that night we decided to keep it light, sharing two tapas plates for entrée (salt and pepper tofu; rabbit and pork rillettes; both excellent) and for mains a salmon and chardonnay pie (Kristen) and pan-fried salmon on mash with steamed asparagus (me). Both fine if not superb, but a great way to laze away a couple of hours.

After a suddenly rushed trip to the local pub to put our bets on the Melbourne Cup (we had time zone issues all the way through South Australia!), we then headed east towards our home for the next few days: Dunkeld in western Victoria. The drive was very pleasant and while I pulled over for a rest in Casterton Kristen had a wonderfully random chat with an old guy out walking his cataract-affected dog, Primrose. We arrived at Dunkeld on time for a change, and were able to rest a bit before having the best meal of our lives…

Everything we thought lacking in technique and invention at Stefano’s was more than made up for by the meal enjoyed at The Grange restaurant in the Adelaide Hilton the following night. Head chef Cheong Liew has been a legend in Australian food for decades, and his highly worked and stylised food stuns you with complexity and intrigue. For most of the dishes, I think that even if I had a demonstration DVD and a year to practice I would still struggle to deliver a single morsel anywhere near as good as what Liew and his chefs produce every day.

The dining environment is luxurious and relaxed. Though not entirely closed off from the hotel lobby, the buzz of action from the foyer is masked by a loud trickle from the central water feature and conversation was never difficult. We were led to our enormous table and seated in voluptuous armchairs for the whole experience – it’s amazing how useful arms on chairs can be when you’re dining for nearly four hours! Service from our principal waiter was exemplary, the others were always good but sometimes a little hard to understand when they were explaining a dish. However questions were answered clearly and succinctly.

Entitled “A Migration of Ideas”, the 8-course degustation led us through a progression of flavours and textures with a sometimes dizzying number of ingredients in each mouthful. To be honest some dishes weren’t to my liking, but taken as a whole the meal was astounding and always interesting. The menu descriptions detailed below offer only the general theme of each dish and the principal components, and in fact there were lots of other unmentioned elements throughout. It is impossible to state them all, so I’ll comment only on the general impact of each plate. Naturally we also chose the matched wine option, and the selections included several well-regarded wines:

Boned chicken wing filled with scallop, Iberico ham, in game consomme – intentionally somewhat bland, this soft starter sharpened our palates for the dishes to come well. Also featuring fennel and fined shredded strands of egg, it was gently savoury and salt-free. Served with 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling.

Drunken prawns, marinated Kingfish, mussel jelly, potato salmon roe salad – also known as “The Four Dances of the Sea”, Liew’s signature dish. Each of the four sections above is presented in it’s own pile and we are instructed to begin at 6 o’clock and work clockwise around the dish to properly appreciate the progression. Some dishes were a challenge to me (the drunken prawns also included a drunken oyster, and the mussels were also hard for me swallow), but there was so much happening in each mouthful my tongue was literally dancing with flavours. Served with 2008 Redbank ‘Sunday Morning’ pinot gris.

Kangaroo Island marron with duck neck sausage, fisherman’s rice – The Fisherman’s rice dish could stand alone, and as our waiter explained it contained miniscule portions of numerous different seafoods cooked with the rich but not leaden rice. But next to the marron and duck neck sausage it was a poor cousin: we both thought the richness and intensity of flavour in this combination almost orgasmic. It was the highlight dish of the night for me (and Kristen), without doubt, though the beef dish to follow was a good second. Served with 2007 Yalumba FDW7c chardonnay.

Cedar smoked magret duck breast on caramelised turnip and truffled sauce – the waiter explained this dish’s unusual texture is due to the duck meat being cured then poached, the result chewy without being tough. Overall a rich and sweet dish, the matching wine (2005 Robert Johnson merlot) a slightly heavy mis-match though it is a good wine.

Grilled wagyu beef with braised beef cheek, tomato, green olives, orange zest – neither of us are huge beef eaters, so the relatively small portions of this dish were perfectly sized. And oh-so-perfect in taste: a rectangle of pepper-seared Wagyu fillet was divine, and the small mound of braised beef cheek also suitably rich. An unmentioned but valuable element on the plate was eggplant, its sweetness offsetting the peppery spice. By the end of this fifth course Kristen was getting rather full, but I gamely soldiered on. Served with a superb 2005 Greenock Creek ’Alices’ shiraz.

Braised shark lip, sea cucumber in carrot oil, aromatic broth – so you want to know what braised shark lip is like? Done this way it is a milky-translucent flat rectangle of gelatinous gooey softness, very rich and quite spicy. I was a fan. The sea cucumber? Like chewing a hockey puck. Hard and dense, this resisted the teeth strongly and had a tangy edge from its seasonings but no discernible taste of itself. I had to put this aside, but the rest was fine. A very interesting dish in the context of the entire meal, its spicyness and focus on texture well-placed just before the sweeter final two courses. Served with Lustau ‘rare amontillado’ sherry, a good match.

Delice de Cremier, Tomme de Chevre, Beaufort D’Alpage, Gres de Vosges – four different French cheeses, three of sheep’s milk and one of goat. During the break before this course we’d resolved to skip the cheeses entirely but on arrival they were too tempting to dismiss, so we nibbled at them while quaffing 2008 Stefano Lubiana ‘Primavera’ pinot noir.

The final plate is your choice of two, depending on the degree of “stuffed” you think you are after the sixth course. Either “Imperial Rice and sago square, anglaise sauce with cinnamon ice cream and fruit compote” or “chocolate bonnet, prune Armagnac ice cream, and almond brittle”. We had one of each and both were brilliant, neither surviving intact for long. The wines were either 2006 Tilbrook Estate botrytis pinot gris or Campbell’s ‘Classic’ Rutherglen tokay (superb).

The only real negative about this meal is that there was more food in it than your average person could comfortably eat. We intended to walk through the city for a while afterwards to aid digestion, but somehow all we could manage was a short stagger back to our hotel and a long rest. Eating here was not on the original plan, but I’m very happy we had the chance to do so while Cheong Liew is still directly involved in the kitchen. A recent review panned The Grange for, amongst other things, its poor location in the foyer and Cheong Liew’s frequent absences from the kitchen. I found the setting rather special, and I specifically asked our waiter as we were leaving whether Liew was in the kitchen that day. I was told he had left at 7.30pm, after overseeing prep all afternoon. His under-chefs are well-schooled in the food and clearly didn’t need direct oversight in my opinion. A memorable, masterful meal.