We booked in for the Friday Lunch. We arrived a little early, so we thought we would try a wine tasting at the cellar door. We gave up on this idea as we weren't even acknowledged by the staff. Just flatly ignored. So we decided...to go through to our lunch booking. It was explained, the only thing we needed to choose was our mains. As there was 'only one' dessert on the menu today. Starter, is sort of a tapas like affair. I have a feeling the chef maybe visited summer camp and got inspired. We had pickled cucumbers with chickpeas and some edible succulent. This was bland and tasted of cucumber. The chickpeas had just been left as they were, not roasted or processed. And the pickling had no effect on the taste. Two onion Bhajis. That appeared to have only been introduced to spices on their first date. The overriding taste here was of the caramelised onion towards burnt. A salad of garden beans and mushrooms that had been blow torched. This was probably the most successful dish, but only because the beans were fresh and had a nice taste. The mushrooms did compliment them, however, again. It's stuff you picked from the garden. Heirloom tomatoes with caramelised nectarine segments. This was ill-conceived. The caramelised (or burnt) nectarine overpowers everything. The tomatoes were nice on their own. However, there is no process involved here. Then we had the smoked emu sausage. With their own cured ham. The cured ham tasted of nothing really. And the smoked emu sausage tasted of smoke. And some bread and some fancy cultured butter. This was probably the highlight of the meal, to be honest. Then moving on to mains. I had the lamb rump and my wife had the aged pork on apple sauce. The lamb had that slimy texture when you water bath meat, it's cooked but the texture is off. This had been cooked with chilly or some other spice that took my breath away and overpowered any lamb flavour. This was served on a carrot pure with some burnt cabbage of some sort. This just added a note of burnt char to the dish. The pork had a nice bubbled crackled bit of fat on top. However, the whole of the fat hadn't been done properly in a way that you get that nice crackling all the way down. so there was a thin layer of crackling and the rest of the fat was just gelatinous fat. Again, I think this had been prepared sous vide and finished under a grill. What you really want is it roasted properly in an oven for hours. The pork was bland and tasteless other than the sharp acidity from the apple stew. This was served on some sharp tangy tasting white gloopy stuff. Which we later realised was the apple sauce. Some unattractive green stuff, like collard greens, not entirely sure what it was. Then our waitress brought along the 'only dessert on the menu' Which was baked chocolate. With a passion fruit skin and mint ice cream and pickled blackberries. With popped buckwheat. It was at this point I spotted the winery dog outside of the window taking a crap on the lawn, and I understood where the chef got the inspiration for baked chocolate. Baked chocolate is not a thing for a reason. It has a terrible wallpaper texture with a sort of grittiness to it. That is not further enhanced by eating popped buckwheat as they are like eating small pebbles. The ice cream, well the chef didn't need to bother with the passion fruit skins as the overriding flavour is a sharp mint. The pickled blackberries, well he could have saved himself some effort there as again, the mint destroyed any subtle flavour you might have got from them. All in all this was one of the worst meals we have ever had, whoever is doing the tasting needs to step aside and let someone with a better palette do the tasting work. There was no subtlety, there was no blending or enhancing of flavours through processes. Then when I went to pay the waitress presented the bill. As she was holding the machine up, she asked how the meal was. So I told her it was terrible, ill-conceived, poorly executed and disgusting. To which she replied, "uh hu, well sorry about that”. She didn't give a stuff.More
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