Home Hill 2012

Lunch on Thursday was at Home Hill to mark the annual pilgrimage to visit Rita’s roots (so to speak!).

I have to say quite honestly I could not fault one single aspect of the menu, the service or the food (and even, though I can’t testify to it myself, the wine, as daughter number 4 drank her way through two glasses of the Home Hill pinot with ease, sipping whilst intermittently exclaiming how glorious it was!).

We ate:

To start with, a shared Taste Plate (pictured above): chef’s selection of fresh local produce priced at $20 for one person, $30 for two. We also had a serving of their fresh-out-of-the-oven sourdough bread ($3) with the strongest lemon pressed olive oil I can remember, and balsamic. The lemon flavour hit me the instant the oil/balsamic mix hit my mouth! It was stunning, and I never usually have the bread in a restaurant as I find it too stodgy.

The most fabulous tasting platter ever included:

Spicy Asian prawns, roasted pork belly, rare roast beef slices, saffron Milanese arrancini balls topped with tomato concasse, sous vide chicken stuffed with goats cheese and prosciutto, olives, and tomato and red capsicum gazpacho with chive flowers. It was unbeatable, with each mouthful of the assorted tastes being better than the previous one!

When dining out, I often select a tasting plate from a menu as I hope it contains a good cross-section of the restaurants food and illustrates the chefs expertise and imagination. Some plates are purely money-making exercises which demonstrate the chefs laziness, while others, like Home Hills’ really do what I envisage them doing and provide you with first class examples of chefs talents. If I was shopping round for a function venue and they bought out that tasting platter to me as an example of the sort of food they create there at HH, I’d be totally sold!

For mains, we couldn’t go past the Twenty-one day dry aged rib eye (500g), roasted kipflers, Huon mushrooms, blackened cherry tomatoes, pinot jus ($48) and the

Oven roasted medallion of Huon salmon, red wine jus, soft herbs and béarnaise sauce ($29.50)

We accompanied the mains with a side order of new season roasted pink eye goose fat potatoes ($7) but didn’t get to taste any of them as our platefuls of food were sufficient.

We topped off a perfect meal with the most fabulous vanilla crème brulee served alongside the best rhubarb compote I have ever had in all my born days! So fabulous, in fact, that I had one taste of it, and stalked out to the kitchen to ask chef Jonno what he’d done to achieve such a perfect rhubarb texture and flavour! He confessed to having sous-vided it for 10 hours at 60°, in rosewater and some spices. It was crunchy and rosewatery and sweet and absolutely stunning!

I realize quite a few people bag Home Hill, as they do many other restaurants, but I have to say in all honesty that I consider them right up there along with the best. If I want a guaranteed consistent, excellent meal experience, I know with certainty I can get it at Home Hill. Thinking back to many past disappointing meals I have had at other equally higher priced venues, HH has never let me down and for that I am truly grateful.

Rib eye

Salmon medallion

Creme brulee