Meandering at Meadowbank

Lunch today was at Meadowbank, and what a lunch it was. I was joined by one of my regular commenters on this blog, LT, who is also an extremely keen eater-outer and great human being and dining companion as well. (It was actually a working lunch, but let’s not muddy the waters here).

The food was sublime. It was amongst the best I’ve had, and I hate to say this, but my undying devotion and allegiance to a few local well known chefs now needs to be shared with Simon West. Thank god I’m not so easily converted to religion or sports!

I have tried to find something to fault and so far haven’t succeeded, so you’re just going to have to read on as I exhaust my adjectives for ‘perfect’.

Meadowbank’s menu encourages patrons to go more for the ‘grazing and ordering as you feel like it’ style, than the previous traditional way of ordering an entrée, main then dessert. I much prefer the Meadowbank way. They also have the ‘food miles’ noted on each menu item as well, which is important for those of us who actually care about this issue.

Today’s menu was such a hard one to select from that we ended up telling our attentive, meticulous and personable waitress Nina to just let chef send out whatever he wanted from the menu, and we’d eat it. So he did, and we did.

We started with a platter each which contained one Dunalley natural oyster with beetroot vinaigrette; a demi tasse of celeriac soup with (a slice of) chorizo and smoked paprika, and a smoked trout fritter with lemon aioli. We were hard pressed to pick a favourite amongst these 3 first offerings, but I think mine was the trout fritter.

Simon said they were all about natural flavours and letting the tastes speak for themselves, and that is indeed exactly what his food did. The above wasn’t tizzied up in any way, but perfect as it was.

Next came 2 plates to share, then another 2. The first two dishes were the Sugar cured ocean trout served on a perfect potato pancake topped with crispy bacon and horseradish cream (pictured above), and Carpaccio of Marrawah beef, confit beetroot, aged pecorino and truffle oil. LT loved the trout better but my fave out of those 2 was the beef – believe it or not! (Yes, I, the well done steak eater LOVED the carpaccio!!).

Then we shared the Char grilled yellowfin tuna, grapes, white anchovy, capers and pinenuts which was to die for, and Spring lamb – a lovely tender piece of braised leg served with crushed broad beans and salsa verde, plus a crumbed cutlet with a tablespoon of ratatouille.

A saucer-sized serving of Leek and Sage risotto was then placed in front of us, which also was beautifully ‘saged’.

We nibbled on bread with a lovely olive oil, as well as a delicious olive tapenade. I didn’t need these but wanted to try both, so did. In another restaurant I would have been more than happy to eat the bread along with the oil and tapenade, but given the high standard (and amount) of the rest of the food, this was easily dismissed as superfluous.

We finished off sharing an individual lemon tart topped with early season raspberries and vanilla bean icecream.

Total cost for the above was $108 for the two of us, which included 3 bottles of Gillespie’s Ginger Beer – superb value for what we had, but I must be honest and disclose that a few items were provided as ‘tasters’ and not included on the bill.

There was nothing tricky or wanky about this food. It was simple, straightforward and honest to true cookery, and eating. It is what I would love to be able to produce were I talented and skilled enough to do so. The ingredients were top quality, and it shone through quite obviously.

I was taken to task by Head Chef Simon West, quite rightly, for not having either mentioned or visited Meadowbank before now. I was stupid to have left it so long since my last visit there which was years before I’d even heard of the word ‘blog’. I hereby formally apologise to Simon, and Meadowbank, for this oversight.

It won’t be that long before I return, believe me. To sum up – I loved it there. I can’t speak too highly of everything we experienced today – the food, the service, the ambience, the venue, the company. I am proud to live in a place where we can experience, if we want to, such a high standard of excellence in hospitality.