No, not a title for a blog I thought I'd ever write. However, having just been in Australia immediately after the Baggy Greens had lost the Ashes and the Wobblies lost at home to the All Blacks, I was in a more charitable mood than usual. Well, what gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair was witnessed - it was wonderful.
However, nothwithstanding the current tarnish on the Aussie's international sporting efforts, what good realm of their endeavour shall we find to comment on?
The food and wine if you could not guess! I'll cut directly to the highlight of several exceptional meals - that a colleague and I enjoyed at Sepia, a new restaurant in the Darling Park complex in Sydney. I had read about it in Gourmet Traveller (in my humble view the best wine and food magazine in the world) and was caught by the fact that the chef, Martin Benn, used to head the kitchen at Tetsuya's.
I began with the Tuna Tartare with avocado cream, soy and wasabi Jelly and was reduced to licking the inside of the beautiful glass bowl it was served in. I had only been able to decide on this entree at the direction of our fine waiter, simply because of my complete inability to choose from the list of 8 choices. Then to the main; so often in fantastic new restaurants, for whatever reason, the mains don't live up to the strength of the entrees. Not here, I can assure you. Once again, a difficult choice but I opted for the Butter-poached West Australian Marrons. I was presented with 4 plump sweet tails, with the meat of the claws sauteed with enokitake mushrooms. Divine. The only slight blemish on the evening was that my colleague had chosen her main even better than I did: Roast Loin of Gippsland Lamb, Crisp Lamb Belly, Braised Daikon, Jerusalem Artichoke and mushroom infusion. I confess I have never eaten sweeter, more tender or better cooked lamb anywhere (and this from a Kiwi!). The mushroom infusion came in a separate glass beaker and was poured over the lamb at the table. It was exquiste. How do I know, because I ate half my colleague's meal of course.
Got lost in the impressive wine list, was hugely impressed to find a good selection by the half bottle (wish all restaurants did this) and we were over the moon with our '06 Kumeu River Coddington Chardonnay and the '04 Faively Gevrey Chambertin.
We skipped the deserts - a travesty - but will venture there next time, soon!!!!
Monday, 31 August 2009
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1 comments:
Just unbelievable. And I don't mean the cricket as the one day series will be either a whitewash or a washout and the return Ashes series will definitely be the former.
I have eaten a good few meals with Jeremy and heard plenty of reviews of meals that I wasn't lucky enough to enjoy but this meal review is something else. If it reads like this, God only know what it tasted like.
Is that Australia In Depth that I see on the horizon?!
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