Artisan, Narrabundah Shops, 12 March

 

Present: Jim, Karen, Ron, Kim, Megan, Andrew

 

We decided to have one of our special dinners, to mark Ron’s retirement, so Artisan was it.

And of course we had the degustation, which we always seem to do because Ron likes them.

We started off with an “amuse bouche” (I think that is the current term for them), a neat little spoon with figs and nectarines, a cute, tasty little temptation.

 The first of the degustation options was oysters, which I was the only one to take up, the others turned up their noses and chose scallops.  The oysters were brilliant, the presentation was quite spectacular, and the oysters sublime.  The others found the scallops to be “wonderful”, the waygubeef and combination of flavours was brilliant.  One comment was that the scallops were not well cooked, a bit rubbery.

The ocean trout was not fabulous, the flavours were a bit odd.  It came with air dried tomato, gin compressed cucumber and quail egg.  It didn’t quite work.
Next up were the zucchini fritters, with crisp zucchini flowers, butternut pumpkin and goat cheese with nettle sauce.  Um, not really impressive, it came into the category of  “I could have done this at home”.  The pumpkin came in tiny little dots, the goat’s cheese added something but it still needed a bit more to make it more interesting.

The pork, ie pork jowl and gruyere croquettes with coriander mayonnaise and apple slaw, were  okay.  The were very light, crumbed and with the crispy apple a great juxtaposition of flavours. 

The veal was interesting, came with sake marinated mushrooms, radish and snow pea tendrils. Interesting but a bit bland.The lamb (gremolata brushed with parsnip puree, broccolini, baby carrot and jus lie) was great, tasty, cooked perfectly, we all enjoyed it.

 The desserts (donuts and chocolate something) were sublime.

 

Overall, not really sure that this was their best night.  The menu sounded great, but some of the dishes just missed out a bit, and they didn’t quite work. While it was nice, it was more suitable for a restaurant that isn’t trying to sell itself as gourmet, top of the range.