Provenance (Beechworth) 01/2019

The entrance to this highly regarded regional restaurant, which has featured in the AGFG for almost a decade, and is currently rated 30th by Gourmet Magazine in Australia's top 100 restaurant, is through an impressive very large wooden door down the side of this former bank building.

Spread over a number of rooms it retains something of the grandeur of the original building with  a combination of wide square doorways,

20 ft ceilings, with rosettes 

and large arched windows.

 Table are bare with simple settings.
The chef offers á la carte or a tasting menu. $125 for six courses with some extras available. Matched wines add $75 or $125 for premium wines. They have an extensive wine list with a good range of sake which fits their Japanese influenced menu.
I was pleased to see a glossary of sake terms included in the wine menu.

The wine menu is extensive with some concentration on the region but I elected to have sake which was beautifully presented.

 A very much to my taste house made sourdough bread was served early with a cold smoked creamed butter. If you like that sort of thing this was out of this world. My mouth waters thinking of it.

 I skipped the optional starter of home made silken tofu dish with cucumber, ginger and kiriboshi but added a garfish with its grilled bones.

 Just a mouth full, full of taste and crunch.
First course was slow cooked carrots, lavender infused buttermilk, pumpkin seed crumble, pumpkin seed oil.

 The carrots were firm, the pumpkin seeds crunchy but it was hard to distinguish the lavender flavour.
Sashimi, ponzu, wasabi leaf pickle, cold pressed sunflower oil followed.

 The kingfish was as it always is with an interesting contrast with the citrus tasting sauce and the sweetish pickles.
Smoked wallaby tartar, Japanese fish sauce and egg yolk dressing, cured mullet roe

was a benign sort of dish, pleasant and inoffensive as long as you find raw meat to your taste. It was well balances so nothing dominated.
 Free range duck, beetroot, pickled cherry (which had then been dehydrated), umeboshi

was another very appealing dish however a small fly managed to get into the sauce. I moved it to the side of the plate and called the waiter. He quickly removed it and offered to replate the dish. I said it was Ok so he didn't do anything more. I believe that, in any quality establishment that would have been unacceptable and the dish would have been removed without allowing the customer to continue with it.
Tri Tip, silverbeet, Café de Tokyo butter, presumably the chef's joke, a variation on Café de Paris butter

 

was exceptionally tasty although it had quite a lot of gristle in the meat.

I skipped the optional cheese dish and went on to dessert.
Leaves from the garden, raspberries on a cream base behind sheets of meringue.

 A pleasant dessert.
This was another of those unique meals. I suppose in a way every meal is unique but some are more so. As such the are hard to compare to other unique meals. The dishes were very interesting. They were not over the top with a myriad of ingredients. The hero of each dish was made more interesting by its accompaniments, never dominated by them. I very much doubt, as good as it was, that it belongs in the top 100 restaurants in Australia but it certainly is a very good restaurant.

Score: 17.25 /20

Woodland House (Prahran) 12/2018

Since Jaques Reymond sold his eponomous restaurant, renamed Woodland House a few years ago we've reviewed it three times see https://1001dinners.blogspot.com/search?q=woodland+house  with moderate to high praise. 

Neither the venue nor the format of the meal has changed but the food does. Last week we enjoyed the eight course degustation menu. You could have five courses, if you wished.and fortunately they did not insist that everyone should have the same menu.

The meal began with a variety of small bites

Local scallops, fermented chanterelle

Mussel and foie gras

Jerusalem artichoke fetta, Kombu tart, salted egg yolk

and spiced duck tongue with bamboo salt. 

Here, perhaps the thought of the eating a duck's tongue might have disturbed some patrons. If it did they were missing a treat. Each of these tidbits was a delight  and that was only the first course. 
Next we were served wild garlic, poached calamari, seaweed butter,

a wonderful combinations of flavours and textures. Grilled scampi, white asparagus, saltbush where the only bad thing was this photo!

Brioche buns 

accompanied the Murray cod, green almond, smoked oyster 

which was prettily presented. 
King Island wallaby, miso broad bean, pepperberry

 was colourful but rather bland.
Glazed Peckin duck, beetroot, horseradish

turned out to be my dish of the day. The flavours suited my palate. The sweetness of the beetroot blended perfectly. Duck l'orange couldn't be as good as this for me.

The Sher Wagyu fillet (How does one spell that word?), ginger mustard leaf XO 

a distinct Waghu flavour and was super tender but I prefer other cuts with a much higher fat content. Next came the desserts. A roasted white chocolate sandwich in a basket of flowers that they reminded me of my childhood.

Blueberry granita, elderflower, buffalo milk

was the last dish before we were presented with too many petit four.

We drank a Bindi Heathcote 2016 shiraz which was quite pleasant
I have enjoyed some very good meals lately and this was one of the very best. 
Score 17.5/20

Matilda (South Yarra) 10/2018

It's not usual that Sandra and I disagree about a restaurant to more than a minimal degree. Matilda, named after Scott Pickett's daughter, was the exception.

I liked the simple, understated decor, although the chairs could be uncomfortable there is plenty of cushioned seating around the walls.

The attempt at noise reduction with the sound absorbing ceiling is admirable and not unattractive 

but not very effective.
I found the quiet woodwork, Australian themed decor 

appealing and the toilets clean and attractively set out.

The food was not without it's problems. 
you can't go far wrong with oysters, which were fine

A kingfish ceviche had a lot of cucumber and other ingredients which were not kingfish. 

OK if you like cucumber a lot.
Octopus was a bit overdone

but nothing compared to the flat bread which was burnt. 

Excusable for a bush BBQ but I would never choose to eat charcoal as part of my meal at a restaurant.

Spanner crab, described as the go to dish in the current AGFG, is a delicate dish. Attractively served here, with plenty of crab meat,

the taste was drowned out by the accompanying sauce. 
A vegetarian mushroom dish was quite nice but for me the best dish by far was the duck served as a breast 

With the legs and a duck rillette served on a separate plate. 

 Score: Sandra 13.5 Elliot 15.5

Montrachet (Bowen Hills - Brisbane) 09/2018

It's four years since I last visited Montrachet and things have changed a bit. It's been sold and it's moved from a slightly isolated spot in Paddington to a busy restaurant strip and now also have outside dining. In other ways it's very much the same. A seven course degustation ($110) or a four course degustation ($90) with matched wines if you wish. A very French a la carte menu, uniformed wait staff and at least one French waiter.
Table settings are simple

with half a dozen places along the bar

for those who might wish to sit there.
Time for the food.
I find a few dishes that are a good test of a chef, one of them being French onion soup.

They did it very well. Well balanced, not too sweet, enough onion and the crouton covered with just enough cheese remained crisp.
I had been seated outside looking in!

After the first course I accepted a seat at the bar. Fish? lamb? fillet? quail? duck?
Lockyer Valley Quail won the guernsey .

This quite large bird, pan roasted, was served with preserved lemon farce on a bed of baked rhubarb accompanied by a 'baby' potato, parsnip and Juniper scented pan juices was a little bland but the accompaniments made up for everything. The light lemon flavour, the extremely tasty pan juices and the rhubarb were incredible.
As good as ever
Score:16.5 /20