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  One of the best things about last year (and best things during 2020 are guaranteed life long good memories) was @analiesegregory’s Friday lunches at @lucindawinebar. We’re so pleased they are back starting today (a Thursday but from next week on Fridays again). It may be the only restaurant in the world where you are strongly advised to order ahead but you can only order the dish not a seat. Somehow it always works out (and you can order takeaway as well). In theory you can walk in to eat but it’s definitely not recommended. There is always a finite number of servings. These single dish lunches, always with something glorious for dessert, and with the potential for a glass of perfectly-matched wine, are highly sought after. The advice is to keep a close eye on @analiesegregory’s Instagram posts a day or two before, DM her immediately she posts what she is making, and then enjoy something like these beautiful hand-cut noodles, with enough squeak to carry a complex sauce seasoned with crab and Analiese’s black garlic. And arrive early or late if you want to be immediately assured of a seat when you arrive. As always, thank you @kobi_ruz for facilitating these delicious lunches by generously providing Lucinda to host them. You are a very important reason why this is a good town to live in, and these lunches are another.

  2 weeks ago

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  Where to begin … a glorious lunch at @si_paradiso and a chance to hear a little more of @calemason’s upcoming projects (standby for @casa_perth, a beautiful space where the results of his wine hoarding over the last few months are about to be revealed). Needless to say with Cale choosing we managed to dent their list of greatest hits (there are a lot) but still we feel only scratched the surface. If we lived in Perth we would eat here constantly - and probably, because it is big and very lively and we are old, at lunch time when it’s not quite so busy and the pace is relaxed. Wine generously provided by @tomvanbeem who, more patient than us, still had a bottle of the de Moors’ 2014 Le Vendangeur Masqué Caravan, which we can report is still drinking beautifully. No matter where the grapes come from (Caravan is négoce fruit) the wine is always so distinctly de Moor. He also opened a bottle of Les Valseuses 2019 Ces gens-là. He has just started to import Antoine Le Court-Chedevergne’s wines (he of the beautiful @casaantolia just outside Arbois) and this, our first taste, was delicious. It’s as tasty as that colour in the glass promises (there is a photo). This first photo is the lobster tramezzini - menu click-bait that takes you to a good place! There is also pâté en croûte (with truffles), kingfish crudo and steak tartare with celeriac chips, crab on roti (dangerous), mussel-stuffed baby calamari with amped up spices, aged coral trout topped with lemon and capers (the gentle acidity just right after so many rich dishes) and, just in case we hadn’t eaten enough, one of their justly famous pizzas. We are very proud to have so many of our wines here and at the new Casa. They are in safe hands.

  1 month ago

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  When you feel the call to drop in every night it’s pretty easy to work your way through the whole menu at @winesofwhile, a home away from home that can be a full on restaurant meal, a one glass of @twometretall cleansing ale pit stop after tastings all day, somewhere to drop in for a piece of custard tart or a satisfying piece of grilled sirloin with horseradish cream one dish dinner. The custard tart may not always have pink grapefruit marinated in Mosse vermouth on the side, which was @jackbotha’s inspired addition when we did a by the glass take over the other night but it will still be delicious. Here are some highlights from recent days.

  2 months ago

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  Not sure if it is an ageing thing or not but for us the best long multi-course meals are always lunches and Saturday lunch at @gauge.brisbane is one of the best. Long enough to be special for an extended lunch with much missed friends and balanced enough that we could still eat dinner! Thinking of the wonderful people who cooked for us and served us here and in other Brisbane restaurants a few weeks ago who are now in the midst of an uncertain lockdown. Please Brisbane people support them all - it’s up to you to make sure they and their staff get through this well. Hopefully the photos of this very delicious lunch might inspire someone to click on @gauge.Brisbane’s profile and be tempted to order what sounds like a brilliant takeaway menu. So many good things here - especially the barbequed sugarloaf cabbage with beer sauce - so much flavour in those greens garnishing the dish. And who can resist fried school prawns.

  2 months ago

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  Delivering wines on Sunday night (not particularly usual) but it led to this unexpected moment, with a spot at the bar at @ficohobart unoccupied (very rare). This dish. House-made squid ink pasta (such good texture) with ‘Italian XO’ and a glass of 2019 @cantinagiardino T ara ra. What a match. So good when one of those great food and wine moments you will never forget just happens. One minute you are lugging boxes of wines and immersed in work and the next minute this …

  2 months ago

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  One for the potato lovers (and we know that’s most of us)! Hasselback potatoes made so much more delicious with this nduja-infused sauce at @timbrekitchen. And a little bit of self-promotion because the @domainedelaloue Le Blanc Jura Chardonnay which we’d long sold out of was quite a perfect match with this and the rest our lunch. Also photographed: Flatbread with beets and yoghurt Chicken with almonds and salsa verde Miso caramel mousse with honeycomb. And just briefly it stopped raining and the sun came out to make the most of the light and spacious dining room. Very grateful given the situation in Victoria and NSW at the moment to be able to enjoy the pleasure of a drive in the country (well almost - some might argue it’s in the suburbs of Launceston) and the pleasure of a long lunch. If you live in Tasmania and enjoy eating out now is the time to do it if you want to help make sure our restaurants are here on the other side of this. With NSW and Victoria closed to us much of their customer base has disappeared overnight. While we keep on reporting 🍩 covid numbers it’s a great time to make the most of our bubble of normalcy at the end of the world.

  2 months ago

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  Oh @agnes.restaurant why did we only make one reservation during our short visit to Brisbane? Such an exciting menu with so many choices we could only scratch at the surface of. Next time we have promised ourselves to plan further ahead and eat here more than once. Here’s some of the reasons why. Sourdough crumpets topped with with spanner crab meat, crème fraîche and egg yolk. Grilled chicken tails with garlic cream and pickles. Perfect mouthfuls. Hay roasted mussels finished with buttermilk, gose (had to look that up - we need to learn more about beer), hazelnuts and sweet potato leaves. With this sauce it was the perfect time for house-made sourdough and smoked cultured butter to arrive. Wood-roasted cabbage with koji butter sauce, egg yolk and truffles. Hapuka, burnt butter, gooseberries (such a good accompaniment), lovage, fish bone garum. The purity of the fish and intense savouriness of the dish turned out to be a perfect foil for the richness of everything we had eaten until then. Grilled rainbow chard, ajo blanco, almonds And to finish mandarin and olive oil ice cream and a brown butter crumb.

  2 months ago

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  We went to Brisbane - first trip off the island since March 2020. So exciting to visit restaurants we have never eaten at and meet people we only knew via email. And then things went covid pear-shaped and we got back to Tasmania with 3 hours to spare before most of Queensland was locked out. A new way to travel - masks plus that frisson created by not knowing if you can come home or not. Here’s our homage to @snackmanbris - there is nothing quite like it, possibly anywhere, not just anywhere in Australia. A wall of wonderful wines (see photo!), some of the rarest in the country, to drink with the most delicious of Chinese-inspired snacks - dumplings, buns, house-made sausages, noodles and even something verging on a salad, very aromatic with copious amounts of mint. These two things together (wine and this particular food), both so good, are surely unique. Three visits and we didn’t quite nail the whole menu but we thought it was important to leave the odd untried dish, perhaps a superstition to make sure we return. Totally seduced.

  3 months ago

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  It’s just over two weeks since the internet shattered us with news of Dominique Belluard’s death. The shock may have passed but the sadness never will. He was one of France’s great vignerons but he contributed much more than just his beautiful wines. His championing of Gringet, proving it was not, as had been thought, a local name for Savagnin but a variety in its own right, and of Savoie wines generally ensures his influence will always extend even further than Domaine Belluard’s iconic wines like Le Feu and his sparkling masterpieces, all made with Gringet. We have always been grateful for the happy coincidence that we were in Paris in November 2010 and that Michel Moulherat let us gate crash a private tasting of Savoie producers he had organised at La Cave de l'Insolite. It was a bar we gravitated to in that era and we just happened to try to call in for a glass of wine as the tasting was in full swing. Four days later we had placed our first order. Looking back, our customers must have loved them as much as we did because our first shipment arrived in January 2011 and we placed another order that same month. We also owed a lot to @kbirch79 at Garagistes and later @richhargreave at @momofukuseiobo for pouring the wines and proselytising Dominique Belluard and Gringet with as much enthusiasm in those early years as we were. It has been such a honour to share Dominque’s wines in Australia, and to follow and benefit from his continuing inventiveness and glorious winemaking. We are all lesser without him. We’ve shared some photos here, including one at that first lucky tasting (the 2009 bottles). But we have no photo of our favourite memory of him, weaving between tables at Chez Remi during the Loire salons one year, with a magnum of Le Feu in hand, on a night when the restaurant was full with all the vignerons showing wines at Les Pénitentes, and one table of very lucky Australians. That smile, knowing everyone wanted what he was sharing, is unforgettable. We don’t need a photo. Vale Dominique.

  3 months ago

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