Hardy's Verandah
Night has fallen. Time to feed… :[>
It's been a while since my last Feed Report, so I'll make it up to you by stuffing my face until I need to be wheeled out on a stretcher. :)
Fancy new restaurants are few and far between, but tonight's restaurant is certainly one of them.
After a short drive up to Crafers, I head down a dark driveway, and into a complex of very fancy buildings. Old style, but partly-modernised to a very high standard. The main building is lit up by spotlights. I've been here before. It was my high school formal. I hope they don't recognise me. :o
Tonight's dinner will be a seven-course degustation. However, they've sneakily added two courses, to make it nine.
Little nibblies like these tend to be called "snacks"
Wagyu & caviar - like a flavourful and chewy chip. 8/10
Daikon mascarpone - the daikon (a radish) is crunchy, but has been smoked. Very interesting. 8/10
Seasoned nori (seaweed) - very similar to a prawn cracker. 6/10
Interesting. This was like a thin, cold pumpkin soup, but with raw or lightly-cooked fish in it. The soup also had chilli in it, and its much stronger taste blocked out the taste of the fish, just leaving the slippery fish texture.
The novelty of eating flowers was the main attraction of this dish, though they had a kind of generic vegetable flavour. The broth must've contained a number of components, because I couldn't identify its taste. It had hints of chilli and vinegar.
I've peeled away his little hat, to reveal the fish beneath.
This course is quite bland. The chicken fat emulsion and shallot, other than sounding unappetising, has very little flavour. The crunchy bits add a nice texture, and only a faint herby taste.
This is possibly the sweetest main course item I've ever eaten. It was as sweet as a dessert. While the flavours were actually nice and strong and contrasting, the strangeness of a meat dessert was too much for me. Imagine pork belly, plus custard and apple.
8|
I am 7+, so I am old enough to eat this course.
This piece of meat is soft, and has a lot of flavour. It almost tastes and feels like meat that's aged. As I predict, I don't like it with the wasabi, but with the salt grains, it just lets the flavour of the meat be the focus.
The cow would be proud to have contributed to this dish.
The waitress sprinkles the frozen mandarin sorbet onto the dish.
Sorbet and custard just don't go together. A tangy taste is nice in sorbet, but not in something creamy or heterogeneous. However, the contrasting citrus tastes - yuzu and mandarin - are very novel and refreshing, helping to make this dish much better over all.
Sometimes it's nice to have an unrecognisable flavour, or complex combination of flavours. This custard is like that. This doesn't make it taste amazing. It just means I don't know exactly what I'm eating. The gooseberry is a fairly odd addition.
The chocolate Grenache (the cake) has a thin layer of orange in the middle. There are a lot of subtle chocolate flavours here, and the subtle orange flavour really adds an interesting tang. The sorbet is another unknown flavour, but it does its job of contrasting to the velvety cake.
All in all, this wasn't bad. A new restaurant will take its time to get its menu sorted out. $164 for nine courses is also cheaper than usual. I should pop in here and get take-away sometime, at that price. :P
I take a moment afterwards, to stroll around the place. There are lots of lounges and quiet rooms. It's much more like an old house than a restaurant.
Now, time to return to my sarcophagus in the city. :[>