This blog has had some criticism for the remorseless polis-centric focus of the content. No restaurants further than four blocks from the GPO? Well, it's more of a guideline than a rule. And we'll throw the average out here and now with a jaunt out to the culinary hotspot of Piper St., Kyneton. Which is practically a suburb these days, being a mere 80km from the polis.
A journey back to a simpler time, when butchers warranted their own bas-reliefs and phone numbers were three digits long.
*Yes, I misused that quote for the Bastille Day dinner too. Are you going to argue with Hank Cinq?
The Australia Day weekend was a little holiday for Ecumer & the Perigueuxse. We pushed the 1991 Honda out of the garage on Saturday morning, roll-started it down Flinders Lane and drove up the Calder to Kyneton. Actually Hondas are incredibly reliable. Even though we only drive it about once every six weeks, it performs faithfully and has only had a flat battery twice in eight years of city living. And an Integra is a sports car, dammit!
After a quick visit and lunch with blog member and old uni friend Hound Doug and his family in Gisbourne South on the way, we checked into the Wyoming B&B in Kyneton late-ish Saturday afternoon. Let me gush for a moment and say it's a lovely place. We had a spacious suite of huge bedroom, modern bathroom and a petite sitting room with comfy couch for two, breakfast table for two and TV, which we didn't turn on at all. Every suite is airconditioned and has its own little garden spot and or portion of balcony for a quiet sit.
Our bit of garden was shaded by a 100 year old quince tree, which provides Sue's quince preserves.
After a little while to settle in, our host Sue brought us a platter of local bits and pieces as part of the welcome.
I'm sorry to say that Super Freakonomics is not a patch on the first book.
There were olives, grapes, some bread, a mild blue cheese, some goat's cheese with a red pepper relish, some peppery Kyneton olive oil and a couple of glasses of bubbles. The relish is Sue's own - she is passionate about Kyneton, passionate about produce and cooking, and especially passionate about relishes and preserves, with an album full of show ribbons to prove it. We tried to do justice to it but were very conscious of our dinner starting in an hour or so. After a little while more, Fang the dog came into the garden to show off his latest treat. We suspect he was jealous of ours.
Grrrrr! You won't hear me say this too often, but he's a cutie.
And so off to the Royal George for dinner, a relatively new (new owners in December 2008) gastro-destination that has been in the press a fair bit lately. A detailed literature review/cursory Google shows that the first few pages of comments are mainstream newspapers, local area boosters, menulog and the like. For trustworthy content I like actual peoples' blogs. By a wacky coincidence, the only personal blog I found was our friends and neighbours-a-block-away Mark & Tam. A few weekends ago they also trotted inland, almost literally eating their way from one end of Piper St to the other.
We had an early booking for 6.30pm. Even from the Wyoming, which is right at the south of town near the railway station, the town is compact enough that Piper St is only ten or twelve minutes' walk.
The dining rooms are smallish, with about four tables each, and provide for an intimate dining experience. Decor is at the subtle end with off-white walls, chocolate brown highlights around wall and door frames, and small and subtle paintings on the walls. Dare I say classic? Noise levels are restrained depending on whether you happen to have a table of Whoo-girls in your room (no, we didn't).
Service, on a booked-out Saturday night on a holiday weekend, was flawless. The waitstaff were all knowledgeable about the dishes and the winelist, and found that happy balance between friendliness and professional service that lifts a dinner that bit higher in memory. I would not criticise a waiter for getting the balance wrong (short of a complete "G'day mate" overreaction) but there are definite bonus points for getting it spot on. Our waiter (we think his name was Greg but we may be wrong) was superb, and definitely had our sympathy (for having previously worked at the same multinational corporation as us) and our envy (for having ditched that and moving, to all appearances, into something he really cared about, and we appreciated that care).
Only two of us for dinner so we only got to try a small part of the menu. Firsties :
Did I really take a photo of bread? This may be getting a bit obsessive.
Lovely bread though, with some Kyneton olive oil at the fruity end of the scale, some Kyneton olives*, and goat curd in lemon oil. We of course were stuffed full of Sue's welcome platter so discretion was the better part of valour here. We only had small tastes of each bit, For Science. Except the goat curd, we yummed that right up.
*They are pretty big on olives in the Kyneton region these days. And rightly so given the climate and terrain. We've recently moved from using Spanish EVOO to Kyneton EVOO as our home standard now that Safeway have started stocking it in 3L tins. It's good stuff.
An amuse of confit pork belly with an apple and dark rum puree. Crispy, chewy, gooey, rich and fruity, with a bit of underlying heat from the rum flavour. Yum! The amuses are small versions of the entrees - we looked thoughtfully at this entree and thought maybe central Victoria in high summer was not so much the place for confit pork belly, and ordered other dishes. But they brought us this for an amuse, so we were happy all round. We noticed that the table next door, who orderd the pork belly entree, got a mini-kingfish amuse. Thoughtful. Clever. Good.
The Perigueuxse's entree of ceviche of kingfish, compressed watermelon, watermelon foam and cucumber gin gel ($17). Delicate fish, fruity watermelon, soft texture from the foam, crispy bite from the radish, and a little oomph from the gel. A lovely dish, balanced slightly towards the fruity. I must say that I've had compressed watermelon at a few places now and it really just seems like watermelon to me. The compression changes the texture a bit, but it's still watermelon.
Ecumer's entree : Lime & rosemary wagyu on toast with a parsley ( I think) puree and an edible vegetable garden of baby potatoes, golden and red baby beets, microgreens, beans and kalamata "dirt", and there's a gooey tomato foam underneath ($21.50). The garden is a bit twee and we all saw it on Heston's Feasts about a year ago, but I liked it. It's a good way of getting a lot of flavours onto the plate while keeping them in a proper balance of apartness (all the vegetables distributed separately) and togetherness (melded by the tomato goo and the olive dirt). The wagyu was firm and extremely flavourful, and the toast seemed to be about the texture. The little pale slices inthe photo are shaved foie gras, frozen I think from the dryness. The Perigueuxse hadn't done Foie before and was suitable impressed, although nothing is so transformant as slicing a large lobe open on your plate. It all worked together and was an impressive dish.
The Perigueuxse's main : Crispy skin duck breast on potato and spinach (?) champ, with pink peppered peaches and nectarines and a peach vodka and stone fruit jus ($39). Perfectly cooked duck, smooth champ in gentle enough proportions not to be heavy, caramelised stone fruit (we didn't get any pepper flavour out of it, it may have been a bit subtle) and a savoury and sweet jus. Great balance, local produce, excellent seasonality. A lovely dish again but I think I chose better. Not that eating out is a competition or anything.
Ecumer's main : Sous vide lamb rack with almond gremolata crust, pea and tarragon mustard puree, blueberries and a lamb confit cigar ($38). Gosh there's a lot going on on the plate here. A base of flavoured pea puree precisely combed on the bottom of the plate. Lamb racks at each end (scrupulously sous-vided to a perfect rich pink), a cigar of confit lamb providing a rich fatty depth to balance the otherwise lean components (and intensely flavoured fried lamb confit bits at the end of the cigar. Woo-oo!). Some blueberries and then a few streaks of lamb jus around the outside. A busy plate, but everything in balance. And my, that confit lamb cigar. I could eat a dozen of those.
We struggled to address dessert, being quite full and all, but eventually let ourselves be talked into sharing one.
White chocolate raspberry muille fuille, raspberry noodles, lime and raspbery sorbet, with a sugar shard containing leomn verbena ($16.5). Gettin' repetitive with this comment, but it was a lovely dish. Crisp pastry, luscious sorbet and rich and chewy noodles. A brilliant set of contrasting textures and complementing flavours. A few leaves of lemon verbena on the plate balnced out the fruity raspberry influences with some mild citrus. We savoured.
The Royal George has a splendid wine list, we are told, but with just two of us at table we couldn't do it justice. We had a couple of glasses of bubbles to start, a couple of glasses of rose with the first courses and some cab sauv and shiraz with the mains. Another reason to ask questions and listen carefully - when I said I would like a dessert wine with dessert but wasn't sure what would go with the raspberries - maybe a Muscadet? - the waitress said "I think I've got something", dashed out and returned in a couple of minutes with a perfectly lovely Sauterne-style from central-southern France , which I hadn't even seen on the menu. Bon!
Total billage came to just over $200 which was excellent value.
We had a suberb meal, easily the equal or better of the one hat restaurants in the city we've been to recently. Our impression is of care for ingredients, of using the best techinigues to get the food right without being caught up with cleverness for its own sake, and of a great deal of skill and care in the front-of house staff too.
So go to Kyneton, visit the Royal George and eat their lovely food. If you're organised, have lunch the next day at the bistro next door where the same kitchen team serves simpler versions of the food at bistro prices. Or better yet, catch the train up in the morning, have a long lunch and the train back again in the afternoon; there was an article in the Age recently on good places to do this.
Tomorrow is a big day of walks, museums, Roman harvest gods and pizza! Join in for the next episode of On Golden Fond.
Cheers,
Ecumer.
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