Monday, August 01, 2011

Belle Vedere

To get to this restaurant one passes the open kitchen with half a dozen mouth watering cakes and tarts on the side bench. It sits in the back of my mind looking forward to a treat at the end of our meal. We had a good table living up to the restaurant name, according to our waiter our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard had also sat here. I didn't ask what she ate.
The hand written menus with sections headed by Italian tags - Antipasti, Prima Portata, Portata Principale, have given way to some degree to technology being part printed in Italian, and part hand written, in English. Chef's are listed at the bottom of the A2 page.
We had entrees of pasta shells with cream cheese and walnuts ($18)
which would be easy to make at home and easy to eat too.
Grilled oysters topped with herbs pleased a friend but I did not taste them.

I absolutely loved my entree, black pudding on red cabbage.
Sometimes it's best to ignore details about the ingredients. It was colourful and full of great flavour, and pretty filling too.
For mains we had white rabbit in apple cider and mustard ($38).
This was a beautifully produced dish. The rabbit was tender and moist, an achievement in itself, but the highlight was the gentle creamy utterly delectable mustard sauce, a memorable experience.
Our colleague had pan fried lambs fry with black cabbage ($36) which met his expectations

and Sandra had pork cooked in milk, sage and garlic ($38).
We have had a few things cooked in milk lately and they've all been excellent. This was no exception. Cooked to a remarkable tenderness you could eat it with a spoon and the delicacy extended to its fine seasoning.
All these were substantial serves so our ambitions for the dessert were seriously diminished. We finally shared a pear tartin tart on layers of syrup infused pastry it was a fine finish to a very good meal.

We drank Big Betty shiraz ($57) and enjoyed that too.
Not too heavy with good fruit and little acid it suited us perfectly.
As we were leaving I took some pic's of the cakes.






They were untouched when we arrived!
Last time we were here they introduced a credit card surcharge. that lasted about a week. I imagine petty patrons would just reduce their tips.
This was not our first choice that day but perhaps it should have been.
Score 15.5/20

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