Grazing in the north

Four days in the beautiful north of the state have left Rita exhausted, knowledgeable and slightly more rotund than usual!

Bright and early on Monday morning I left for a meeting in Launceston, which, as luck had it, was held at Mud Restaurant - part of the Peppers Seaport complex. It is a lovely restaurant. The service was great; our waitress was friendly, efficient and chatty - all traits that I love to see in waitstaff waiting on my table.

For entree, I had a Tasting Plate ($19.50) which contained a few of those gorgeous-looking things on those long, rectangular, white plates, which are reasonably forgettable a day after you've had them because they didn't really strike a chord, except for one - Eggplant Parmigiana. It was bloody beautiful, and I would have been happy, in hindsight, to have forgone the rest & just dined on that.

My main was fantastic. It was Mustard crusted beef cheek, creamed potato & winter vegetables ($30.50). The flavours were perfect, the beef (as it should) melted in my mouth, and the veges scant but sufficient for lunch.

The dessert was to die for. Chai Panna Cotta with honeycomb ($12.90). The Chai flavour was enough that it was definitely Chai but not disgustingly, cloyingly so.

Fabulous meal. Loved it! Didn't need dinner that night.

Next day was the drive to Cradle Mountain for a 3 day conference at Cradle Mountain Lodge.

I hadn't been to Cradle for at least 20 years, maybe 30 years. It had altered a tiny bit since then.
The Lodge is to be 100% recommended, for accomodation, food and service. The staff were fabulous. They worked their butts off looking after the 50-odd people in our group, and produced the most wonderful dinners in that scenario that I can remember.

For instance, last nights dinner was a choice of:
Entree
*warm thyme polenta muffins, salad of charred pumpkin, spanish onion, red capsicum, rosemary pesto
*sweet corn shitake bisque, crab dumplings, poppy seed lavosh
*three degrees of freycinet oysters - wasabi & cucumber shots (one of); baby spinach, black label king island brie, berkshire bacon (2 oysters); champagne vinaigrette & chervil (2 oysters).
Mains
*pepperberry crusted tasmanian salmon, coconut rice, sesame asian greens, citrus fennel salad
*venison fillet, sweet potato & pepita salad strudel, date & pumpkin chutney, oven roasted truss tomatoes, tazzieberry reduction
*pork fillet, proscuitto, roasted rhubarb, red capsicum & snowpea ragout, sage & garlic oil
Dessert
*warm apple pudding, balsamic apples, sour cream icecream
*chai tea pannacotta, honey baklava, green tea granita
*tasmanian cheese plate, dried fruit medley, tomato chutney

Very interesting to note that till Monday at Mud in Lonny, I'd never heard of Chai Panna Cotta. Naturally I ordered it again last night at Cradle Mtn. It was good but not as good as Muds.

For mains, I had the fish, and let me state here & now it was bloody brilliant. Given the number of people who had ordered it, I expected it to come out looking and tasting like a mass-produced lot of grilled fish.

It was salmon done beautifully, moist, tender and subtly tasty. But the piece de resistance was the rice on which it sat. You would normally assume that rice is rice is rice. Its function is to balance the fish easily on the plate. Not this rice last night. I would KILL to know what chef did to it, but it was THE best tasting rice I have ever eaten! NO SHIT!

I am not going to rave any more about it but I really do want to record my admiration for a job exceedingly well done by all staff at that outlying little venue. Not that many people want to work outside the city perimeters, so these guys deserved a medal for getting off their butts, working right out there in the wilderness and still acting as if they really enjoyed what they do for a living.

Mind you, with free Austar, accomodation & food, I would be happy to forget that the real world existed away from there, at times!