It's ma birthday!!

[eataust]

... and lookee where _I'm_ going for dinner!!

http://www.deepbluebistro.com.au/menus_Degustations.htm

Oh, BAYBEE :)

No, it's not cheap. So I expect great things from this menu!!

I shall report tomorrow ...

[Bluetongue]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Eataust!

I am so jealous I could implode

[Rimbaud]

Have a good one EatAust by the sounds of all your activities, both regular and extracurricular, you deserve it

[Rimbaud]

WELLLL?!??! How was the chargrilled Emu with goats cheese gnocchi and an Illawarra plum sauce?!?!? :envious expression:

[Rimbaud]

btw guys, it just clicked... we need a segment for rating and chatting about bushtucker restaurants and commercial suppliers & ingredients, don't you think?

So i took the arrogant liberty of moving this thread to the new sub-forum, EatAust. But since you're a mod too, you can always just move it back where it came from!!

[Guest]

Yes, many happy returns for yesterday EatAust! Tee hee, I usually go to Adelaide's Red Ochre for mine... But from the looks of that menu, I'm pretty sure where my first dinner-stop will be when I'm in the Big Smoke next! Like Rimbaud, I can't wait to hear how that emu turned out

C

[clare_b74]

That was me above BTW - bloody technology, grumble, grumble

C

[eataust]

*belch* I'm still recovering :)

The emu was pretty special - I could really get into illawarra plum sauces, I tell you.

I should really go through the menu piece by piece, shouldn't I?? :)

btw, I went completely overboard and took some samples of my garden - native mint (mentha australis), cutleaf mintbush, lemon myrtle, and tetragon. This was received with some interest :). (I'm being slightly restrained because I'm planning to post the URL of this review to the chef, who came out at the end of the night to have a nice chat, and I don't want to come across as any more pretentious than I probably already did!! :) ).

Note: I'm going to be a little more critical of the food than I would normally be, simply because these are such new flavours that I'm truly interested in how they do - and don't! - work. So please take the criticism as a sign of true delight and interest, rather than negativity.

Note: I'm not going to comment on the wines. They were all delicious and well-matched, possibly with the exception of the reisling which, as Deborah (?) our fabulously well-informed and wonderful degusteur (ER??) said, wasn't quite the sweetness she hoped for. But delicious all the same.

So!


Chargrilled damper bread with lemon myrtle oil

Nice bread. We got plain olive oil with balsamic vinegar, which I sprinkled with salt as per my habit 'cos I'm fond of that. It could be worth experimenting with one of the dukkas and infused olive oils available from Taste Of The Bush with the bread.

“jaggard passion” cocktail

Utterly delicious. It had lemongrass-infused bourbon in it, which added a fabulous touch of sharpness to the sweetness of the Jaggard (quandong liqueur, which is muscat-sweet and rich), passionfruit, and errrr some other things :). A lovely way to start.

***

Nth Queensland crocodile carpaccio with lemon myrtle oil, caperberries and bush tomato confit

YUM!!!! Paper-thin slices of raw croc - the most amazing solid chewy texture. The bush tomato confit was a complete winner, retaining the caramelly flavour of the bush tomatoes but removing that damn bitterness that drives me insane (it's hard to retain just enough to give an edge, but remove enough to make it tasty). I love caperberries and while a touch of saltiness was good, they were maybe a little too much. I wonder if one could get saltbush? Or maybe pickled native limes???

***

Sauteed Murray River yabbies with lemon aspen and sugarbag butter served on seaweed salad

I DO love yabbies. The butter-sweet sauce was excellent. I didn't taste much lemon aspen - my memory of the fruit is something _incredibly_ tart, which would have needed the rich sweetness of the butter to cut it down - but it was good without.

I liked the seaweed salad, but it was a little generically Japanese for a dish displaying native produce. Deliciously sesame and chewy, but not quite right for the yabbies. However, I know we can all commiserate with the chef's comments about the impossibility of getting fresh native greens - it's the very reason I started growing warrigal greens! - and this is an excellent compromise.

***

Paperbark marinated barramundi with grilled witlof and forest lime gremolata

No witlof today, so a substitute salad of wilted greens. See comment on seaweed salad above with the added rider that a bitter salad would have gone excellently with the rich moistness of the barra (barely cooked and beautiful, with crunchy skin). The gremolata turned up in little surprising bites and was perfect - that's one I'll try to replicate myself :)

***

Chargrilled Emu with goats cheese gnocchi and an Illawarra plum sauce

Yum yum yum. Sauce in particular. Note that emu is red meat, not white, thus deserving the rich sauce and pasta treatment. The goat's cheese made the gnocchi salty and lighter.

The one suggestion I'd have is to crust the emu with some native herbs/spices (there's some good mixes out there these days) before searing and serving (very rare, as appropriate and as was done here) for a little additional flavour.

***

Wild thyme infused olive oil poached Kangaroo with roast yam mash,
and an Alpine pepper jus

LOVED the jus. Matched the roo and the wine perfectly. Loved the roo (but then, I do). Loved the flavours. Perfect ending.

I was full at this stage but my partner needed a couple more slices of bread (and oil :) ) to fill the gaps, which they unhesitatingly supplied.

***

Wattleseed crème brulee
Wild lime panna cotta with native berries
Macadamia biscotti

Creme brulee is a _perfect_ way to display those coffee/chocolate/hazelnut wattleseed flavours. And the panna cotta was mild and sweet, to round out the meal. The biscotti was surprisingly neutral - not a lot of sugar - which allowed the macadamias to really shine and clean the palate. Excellent dessert wine, too.

***

Finished with coffee for me, and then a slightly shickered conversation with the chef. Which I _hope_ was Thomas Heinrich because otherwise I have no memory of his name. Did I mention I was slightly shickered??

I have to finish off here but I'll post a few more comments later on ...

[darcy]

happy birthday, sounds delicious!

[clare_b74]

OMG that sounds like the absolute best birthday meal ever! Thanks for the critique Eataust.

I think I'll be spending the afternoon working out just how quickly I can get me to Sydney! Then sit back and covet that menu...

Interesting that supply is as difficult for the professionals as it is for the rest of us...

C

[Bluetongue]

OMG is right! My stomach is already growling and your descriptions were fabulous, darling! Sounds like a perfect birthday for someone like yourself... and I'd never have the guts to talk with the chef, shickered or not. Thanks so much for describing it to us. I'm still envious.

If I'm not here when you visit Victoria, you know where I'll be.

[eataust]

I _had_ brought along samples of the garden; it was kinda likely that someone was going to be interested :)

The chef was not at all intimidatory. He'd spent a few years in New York and apparently came to the restaurant to be told "you're going to be doing native produce; hop to it". The result is therefore mod-oz fusion using native products, which is _exactly_ the sort of thing we need done to the produce.

I now need to visit Gunyah (in Redfern, and the only other native produce restaurant left in Sydney) to compare. I'll take bits of my garden again, just to see what happens :)

[clare_b74]

Looked up that Gunya place's menu eataust - looks almost as grand as the birthday degustation. And right down the road from where I stay when I'm in town... (madly searching for all manner of work-related junket excuses )

So there's only 2 oz-food joints in Sydney then? That means, head-for-head, Adelaide's quite priviledged with our Red Ochre. I'll have to alter my usual rant (or expand it to the whole of the country!).

C

[eataust]

Sydney DID have quite a few, well-respected ones - Edna's Table, Lillipilli at the Rocks and Lillipilli on King, and Muntries in the 80s.

My one hope is that the lack of restaurants featuring native produce might be gradually overtaken by restaurants that use native produce and flavourings in their day-to-day presentations, which could finally and in turn lead to new bushfood restaurants.

I think, too, that the industry is badly hampered by not being able to use "Australian" as a food term and have it mean "using native ingredients". "Australian" means "asian/mediterranean fusion" which is wonderful, but doesn't leave any room for "bush tucker" - and the latter instantly conjures up images of witjuti grubs, paperbark, and damper; not yabbies on tetragon in a native pepper jus.

[Rimbaud]

I remember going to Edna's Table once. (So it no longer exists?) The food was OK, i think i had kangaroo meat in a lilly-pilly sauce or something. But SOOO pricey!