Expensive

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Farmer’s Daughters – Melbourne, City – Friday 30 July 2021 – Dinner

At the age of 43 it is both exciting and terrifying to think I have hopefully at least this much longer to live. Somehow destiny has led to my work being at its busiest at the same time as my birthday each year. Coupled with long nights in a regional role, reporting to global leaders, by the time it comes around I feel twice my age. Instead of “queue the violins” I take solace that it is also a time of excessive celebration.

Tonight, Catherine has us booked into Farmer’s Daughters, where we have been trying to go for months, surviving two lockdowns in between. The only thing I want consistent tonight to the last time we indulged in the city is the pre-drinks at Bouvardia, and indeed this fine cocktail bar living up to the last time we were there. It is absolutely superb. Our fingers are crossed that this dinner that follows is superb too.

While it did take five minutes for us to be seated for our 9pm booking, we did have one of the great tables in the room on the restaurant level. You get a feeling about a place fairly quickly, in this case we were excited, with great initial interactions with the staff.

As it turns out, those initial interactions chartered a course for the rest of the evening, and it showed that service can still be terrific in Melbourne. Despite having wanted to visit Farmer’s Daughters for some time, I actually don’t know a great deal about the restaurant. What was quite obvious, looking at the wine list is that this is a restaurant that celebrates local.

Naturally this extends to the food. Farmer’s Daughters on the restaurant level has a tasting menu consisting of five courses. Whilst you get the menu at the end, the kitchen takes you on a journey of their choosing, subject to dietaries. At the moment, that journey is centred on Gippsland. Our starters, skewers of O’Connor beef, locally grown broccoli, romanesco and cauliflower, and beautifully untouched Lakes Entrance kingfish, were all tremendous and diverse examples of the wealth of local produce in this bountiful region of Victoria.

As Catherine enjoys her Frankland Estate Riesling (Great Southern), and I, my Purple Hen Fume Blanc (Phillip Island), we are served with a dish I’ve since heard is a consistent favourite, and for good reason. The baked Baw Baw Alpine trout, sitting in a shallow pool of mountain pepper cream, with trout caviar, is superb from the first taste to the last. The subtle balance of the flavours, and the soft textures, broken by bursts of caviar, is an outstanding dish. We saw it on the pass as we were guided to our table, and really couldn’t wait to try what we saw, as it is also visually appealing.

Showcasing the fresh produce of Gippsland, sugarloaf cabbage is served bathed in clam butter, with Snowy River Station seagrass. It is a thoughtful vegetable based course. By now we’ve moved on to two new white wines, with mine an Arneis by Adelina (Clare Valley) and Catherine the Cannibal Creek Chardonnay. The latter is another wine from Gippsland, and while not exclusively choosing local wines, the sommelier / wine service has done a terrific job of mixing interesting producers and varieties, and doing their best to also showcase the region where the food is centred.

Our next course of garfish from “Campfire Corner Inlet” is a bit chewy and not to everyone’s taste. Crusted in a Japanese spice mixture called shichimi, which adds great flavour, and served with Wattle Bank oyster mushrooms, replacing the fish with many others would make for a more pleasurable dish.

On the back of a lowlight, but not bad dish, the venison course again hit the high notes. From Terramirra Park, this venison almost melts in the mouth. Beetroot, smoked parsnip, and black garlic accompany to lift the dish even further, but honestly the venison could be served by itself and it would still be terrific. By this stage I’m drinking the Xavier Goodridge ‘Pa Pa’ Pinot Noir, another find from the riches of Gippsland, and life is very good indeed. The attentive wine service also pours me a half glass of the Sagratino/Mourvèdre that I was keen to try by Aphelion.

Service all round had been excellent, and there were few times we were looking around for want of anything. While our table made a big difference to our comfort, I felt that everywhere in the restaurant seemed equally well served. Add to the quality food and service, the whole setting from the expansive glass frontage to Exhibition Street, to the sleek beige interiors, is signalling a new sophistication coming to Melbourne dining.

Dessert is served and looks like a cross between a decadent creme biscuit and a macaron. This take on a pavlova with carob, macadamia and mandarin, has that post-crack give I like in a merengue, and enough sweetness to keep us happy. It’s clever, local, Australian themed, and a nice way to end a high quality and focussed offering from the kitchen.

Good looking spaces are sometimes easier to create from scratch than sketch out of the past. Farmer’s Daughters is a great demonstration of a purpose built restaurant with a local focus that doesn’t remove ingenuity but enhances the experience.

Farmer’s Daughters
95 Exhibition Street, Melbourne
https://www.farmersdaughters.com.au/
info@farmersdaughters.com.au
+61 3 9116 8682

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Chancery Lane – Melbourne, City – Friday 2 July 2021 – Dinner

If there was ever a sign that the hospitality industry is struggling for staff, we saw it tonight. It is really unfortunate that one of the global powerhouses of restaurant service has taken a step backwards, but it is certainly not unexpected. It will get better, though it could be slow progress.

By no means did we have a terrible meal. Any opportunity for Catherine and I to enjoy a long dinner together is incredibly valuable to us. As much as we enjoy flawless, and seamless service, we are not so stuffy to truly care enough to let it impact our enjoyment of a dining experience. That doesn’t mean we don’t notice the misses, especially when they add up.

Twice the floorstaff came to our table with a bottle of wine to pour our glass, only to realise there was no glass on the table. Earlier, our glass for champagne was left unfilled for a long enough period that we got an apology. After almost being awarded someone else’s entree, our mains also took a lengthy amount of time (again, we didn’t mind) and we got an apology for that. There was no need for one of the staff to apologise for it being their first night – you need to work a first night at some stage! They actually handled it well. At one stage I asked for the pinot noir from Burgundy and they said they were new and not familiar with the wines by the glass, so could they bring the menu for me to point to it. Absolutely no problem.

While none of this is concerning in isolation, you could tell Chancery Lane was not running like a well oiled machine on this Friday night. For a Scott Pickett restaurant, where there has clearly been some impressive amounts spent on the luxurious fitout, you expect more. It has a beautiful, big-night-out feel to it, with generally well dressed clientele, and seemingly no expense spared on the surfaces, whether at the bar, or underfoot, and in-between.

Usually the food of Scott Pickett would make up for many of the oversights. We start off with some delicious Mooloolaba prawns accompanied by a “Marie Rose” sauce with a spicy accent, which is better known as cocktail sauce. Wanting to keep plenty of room for main and dessert, Catherine orders the whole flounder with Cafe de Paris, I order the Cape Grim porterhouse, and we also select the gratin dauphinoise, and red oak lettuce salad with pancetta vinaigrette, as sides.

A highlight for both of us is the warm baguette which keeps us going while our mains are delayed. Sublime bread and butter is one of life’s charms, and this has me thinking back to some of the great meals I’ve had, where the attention to detail extends all the way to the simple things in life. On the other hand, while my Cape Grim porterhouse is not bad, for such a nice piece of steak, it lacks a bit. There isn’t the heavy char I’d expect from Scott Pickett having been a regular at Matilda, and the seasoning could be stronger. The truffle jus, and the Dijon helps, but it’s not as good as I’d expect. The sides are beautiful though. The dauphinoise epitomises comfort food, and the red oak lettuce salad cuts through the other elements perfectly.

Personally I’m confused about Catherine’s whole flounder. As the sole fish dish on offer, it is always tough to navigate a whole fish in any setting. It is often delicious and the white flesh of the flounder is very nice. The roe however is not something I was overly aware of. It is not to Catherine’s taste (or texture) and I can sympathise. While I’m sure some love the roe, I think the fish offering could be more diverse here.

We had come this far in our meal, and dessert is a reason in itself to remain, so we hoped our desserts would markedly improve the meal. Catherine’s apple and rhubarb baba, and my Pedro Ximenez, saltana, and chocolate tart, were good, but didn’t elevate to the level we hoped for, and it wasn’t as if we were surprised. Perhaps part of the reason was Catherine’s baba the month prior at Carlton Wine Room was just better, and perhaps it was because the meal couldn’t be properly saved. I should mention the pastry on my tart was first class and showed some signs of the excellence that could be achieved here.

It hurts me to say this, but besides our champagne, and Catherine’s Jean Defaix Chablis, the wines were uninspiring. I was really excited and keen to try a few reds, with some higher priced French offerings by the glass tugging at me. Choosing between Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Pinot Noir, and Syrah, all with a few years of age, I thought I might be in heaven. The Clos de Gamot Cahors Malbec was better than solid, but the far more expensive Bruno Colin Bourgogne Pinot Noir was ill-found for mine. Those who think I’m critical need only look at my other couple of hundred reviews to know that if I’m paying $28 for a glass of wine I am generally going to absolutely love it. I would have preferred a local, and given the depth available, I was surprised to be let down.

There’s a lot of depth also in Melbourne’s restaurant offerings. While it is desperately difficult with staff at the moment, there are still many places that are performing terrifically, and more specifically, there are better Scott Pickett restaurants to try. From Vue de Monde, to Bistro Vue, to Chancery Lane, the fortunes of this address seem to have declined.