Stamps
Out at Mitcham. This place is hard to get into, so it's one of the few places I'd recommend booking for.
I normally don't eat innards, but I'll make an exception for this pate.
The base is light and crispy, and the pate has a strong roe taste.
w. baked polenta, roasted eggplant purée, kohlrabi and chermoula.
Before ordering, I check to see if this meal is infested with coriander. Luckily it isn't.
The lamb shoulder here is a but like a lamb pie. It has a fair amount of flavour, and is very soft, but without the "slow-cooked" taste. The yellow strands on top are kohlrabi, apparently a cultivar of cabbage. The strands taste slightly pickled, and that pleasant but faint flavour is the only flavour they really add.
The peripheral sauces here are a bit hard to know what to do with. The eggplant purée has a slight curry taste, but the thick brown sauce is sticky and tastes like it dripped from cooking skin. Turns out it's a beef jus.
I mop up these sauces with the last of my tasty lamb.
The polenta brick at the left is a big slab of grainy mush, as polenta usually is, but the spicy tomato garnish makes it much tastier.
w. mascarpone, banana ice cream and pecan praline.
I dig into the banana tart, and uncover more banana. I keep digging, and it's all banana! Some caramel does ooze out, but other than that, this is just a crust filled with nothing but slices of banana. The crust is nice and crunchy, and banana and caramel are a nice combination, bit this still isn't really a tart.
The double cream atop the tart isn't really needed here, given the presence of the much stronger caramel.
I try combining all six ingredients here, but I get the feeling the tart and the ice cream are supposed to be eaten separately.
The banana ice cream has a real, mild banana taste, not the fake kind in typical banana ice cream, but it needed to be combined with something stronger than the sugary praline crumble.