Mills Reef Winery
Mills Reef is hardly a stable but if the attitude of the staff on the restaurant is anything to go by then jebus himself was born here and it was our privilege to be on sacred ground but more on that in a minute. Going along Moffat Road and seeing the grounds appear before you is impressive with manicured lawns and rows of trees all leading up to the main building and it's own formal gardens but this is a working site. All of the processing, bottling and distribution happen here even though all of the grapes are bought and shipped from the not so far away Hawks Bay.
As you walk up from the car park the first door on the left is the tasting room so we went there first. As a tip for those visiting a winery with it's own restaurant, here's a good place to try a sip of a few things before you try and match them to your lunch and give you a chance to mull over which bottles you pick up.
Mills Reef Winery, 143 Moffat Road,
Bethlahem New Zealand
In the tasting room we met Ken, the cellar manager who ever so
patiently walked my family through not only their range but the
tasting process (lightest and brightest to heaviest and darkest).
From what I could tell all of the prices for the wine were quite
reasonable where as the souvenirs had souvenir prices.
After a few uhms and ahs we took a price list and headed for the
empty restaurant. There was a choice of the outdoor terrace or
inside a dining/function room. The enormous main dining room was
having the air-conditioning replaced before summer. Not to worry
because ir was spring after all and we chose a table on the terrace
in the shade. Just like everyone else did but being outside the
noise wasn't an issue and the tables were well spaced anyway. After
the stop-off in the tasting room I picked my entrée and main based
on their recommended wines and everyone else chose the recommended
glass. I wanted to see how they stood up to good quality food and
thankfully what came out of the kitchen was great. Luckily I was
really only interest in their red wine because the restaurants fish
order hadn't arrived to meet the demand of their predominantly fish
based menu.
Going around the table my mother had their seafood trio and the
Pinot Gris, a slight alteration due to the lack of fish she had a
king prawn, scallops and a piece of salmon; my brother had the
oysters and my aunt had the bread and dukka which surprised me. For
such a simple sounding entrée the chef added a bit of flair
throwing in a couple of different types of cibatta and more than
just a simple dukka, there was some great avocado oil, tapenade and
homemade pesto too. I had the chicken liver paté with truffles
crostini and the Cab Melot, or at least that's what I ordered.
Instead I got garlic crostini that worked very well and I wouldn't
have had any complaints if only I hadn't ordered truffles. That and
if I didn't have to wait 10 minutes and actually need to get up
from by seat, walk through a construction site and find the wait
staff and ask them for our wine. Even though there were a few
people in the restaurant by that stage I find it hard to believe a
winery restaurant forgot to bring the wine.
Seafood Trio - Prawn, Salmon and
Scallop
Cibatta with Dukka, Avocado Oil, Tapenade and Pesto
Chicken Liver and Cognac Paté and Fig Jam with Garlic
Crostini
Main course ran smoother, Mum had the strawberry and asparagus
salad with Kaimai Brie and a glass of
the Sav Blanc which was tasty and exploration in vegetarian texture
more than flavour, my brother had two giant lamb shanks that were
cut above the knee and were so tender the meat would have literally
fallen off the bone if he'd picked it up washed down with the Cab
Sav. The meat was good quality lamb but seemed a little bland on
it's own and relied in the jus to carry it. Mind you I only picked
at his leftovers, so the most of the meat could have been fine. My
Aunts Cajun chicken Caesar salad was generous, well seasoned. I had
the lamb fillet that was cooked to a perfect pink with a blue
cheese and pear salad with a walderberry jus, much like my
favourite duck salad. The lamb itself seemed under seasoned but
balanced out with some cracked pepper and the jus. The Merlot
Malbec was a perfect match.
Asparagus, Strawberry, Avocado and
Kaimai Brie
Warm Lamb Fillet, Watercress and Baby Spinach Salad with Pear,
Cashew, Kikorangi Blue and Walderberry Syrup
Lamb Shanks Braised with Wholegrain Mustard on Green Pea and Potato
Mash
Dessert. Only mother and I had dessert, her with the mandarin and
cinnamon spring rolls which looked delicious and I had the 'ode to
the lemon' which was a set of three lemon desserts starting with a
lemon curd in a bitter chocolate case the size of a patty-pan, a
lemon cremé brûlée in an espresso cup and a scoop of lemon ice
cream in a parfait glass. All of which matched brilliantly in their
own way to the riesling ice wine. If only it was delivered with the
course. As the waitress walked off I called out "um, and our wine?"
She flicked her nose up and walked off in acknowledgement. I
waited. I waited. Again I got up and asked for my wine yet again.
The excuse was they were waiting for the others coffee to be made
before they bought out all of the drinks. Pity my ice cream had
melted and my crem brule was cold by the time it arrived.
The location, food and wine at Mills Reef are nothing to complain
about but the attitude and service of the restaurant wait staff
really left more a lot to be desired.
Nectarine and Honey Spring Rolls
rolled in Cinnamon Sugar served with Blueberry Syrup and Vanilla
Ice Cream
Burnt Lemon Curd, Lemon Crem Brule and Lemon Ice
Cream
The Daily Grind @ The Peppermill Cafe
Peppermill Café, Milsons
Point
At a recent contract I went out myself and failed miserably picking
the Kirribilli Village Café and Restaurant. I tried their steak
sandwich and it was just awful, chewy, tasteless and very
overpriced. $25 off for the sandwich and a coffee. That’s when I
asked. The team I was working with and I went around the corner to
The Peppermill Café in Milsons
Point, their coffee is a little to be desired considering it’s
Campos Coffee, but it
almost always seemed burnt but the service and food was always
pretty good.
The first day I went I was recommended their regular special, a
chicken and leek pie. Not what I expected in the presentation
department but it was tasty. An individual baking dish with mashed
potato on the bottom, a regular chicken and leek filling and a
square of golden puff pastry balanced across the top. Almost every
day since then I went to Peppermill for either lunch or breakfast,
often for both. When I had breakfast, brunch, or afternoon tea, I’d
pick up a smoked salmon, ricotta and avocado croissant, the
combination of the soft buttery pastry and the oily smokiness of
the salmon was a winner.
Smoked Salmon Croissant @ Peppermill
Café, Milsons Point
They serve an all day breakfast here,
and the majority of the menu was based around breakfast but almost
as often as I’d see someone have a burger I saw someone else have
either the pancakes or french toast, both served with either bacon
and maple syrup or a mixed berry compote. Delicious stuff and well
worth a try if you want a bit of extra energy before hitting either
the Kirribilli or North Sydney Markets one weekend (I worked
weekends too). The beef burger is nice, standard fare, but the
chicken burger was the winner, chicken, bacon, avocado. Damn
tasty.
It’s also licensed and they won’t pass judgement if you have a
Bloody Mary on a Monday!
Chicken & Bacon Burger @
Peppermill Café, Milsons Point
The Peppermill Café
30 Glenn Street, Milsons Point (map)
Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm
Saturday and Sunday 8am - 4pm
T: (02) 9954 1444
F: (02) 9954 1444
www.thepeppermillcafe.com.au
Good Wok - Good Soup
Good Wok - 587 King Street
Newtown
I haven’t spotted anything out of the ordinary or a speciality on
the menu, it’s all the usual stuff you’d expect, mongolian beef,
cashew chicken and all that but it was the bbq wonton noodle soup
that I’ve gone back for. It definitley isn’t the
best I’ve ever had but Good Wok’s version is the type of soup
you go to when you’re stomach is compleltey empty and you need to
fill it with carbs, hot broth, meat and vegetables.
The soup has a good chicken and vegetable stock, fresh bbq pork and
some very fresh vegetables including perfectly cooked brocolli.
Even I struggle to get mine tender-crisp but this was pretty much
perfect not to mention generously served.
Good Wok - BBQ Pork Wonton Noodle
Soup
Good Wok Chinese Food
Ph: 02 9565 2175
587 King Street
Newtown
They don’t do delivery but do take phone orders, it’s cash only
too.
The fish has volume, and vents?
Once I got home though, I couldn’t really be bothered doing anything except drink the champagne. Sunday night I still wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with the snapper so I decided to tea smoke it and make a large single serve vol au vent. It was surprisingly easy and tasted pretty damn good. Much better than those vol au vents your mum used to make at dinner parties in the 80’s and early 90’s!
Smoked snapper vol au
vent
Smoked Snapper Vol Au Vents - Serves
2
1 whole fresh snapper
1 tablespoon of black peppercorns
1 tablespoon of cardamom pods (crushed)
1 fresh bay leaf
1 cup sugar
1 cup of salt
1 cup of white rice
1 cup of black tea
1 sheet of short crust pastry
1 cup of stock (I used rabbit, but vegetable, chicken or fish would
be ok)
1 tablespoon of corn flour
1 tablespoon of fresh cut parsley
Place the snapper, pepper, cardamom, bay leaf and half of the salt
and sugar in a plastic container and cover with water. Leave for
two hours (6 in the fridge). Take the fish out and let it air dry
for a while or pat it dry with some paper towel.
Line a roasting tin that you have a rack and a lid with foil. Mix
the rest of the salt and sugar with the rice and tea and pour
evenly into the foil. Place the tin over a low heat (preferably
with a simmer mat) and heat until it starts to smoke. Place the
fish on the rack, the rack on the rice and the lid on the tin (get
all that? Good). Leave for an hour and turn the heat off but do not
remove the lid.
Once the whole lot has cooled, take the lid off and start to flake
the flesh off the snapper trying to keep the bones out of the
mix.
Heat your oven to 180ºC and cut two circles out of the short crust
pastry and rings out of the puff pastry, the same diameter as the
short crust circles. Place the two pastry stacks on a baking tray
and bake for 20 minutes or until the pastry rings have risen.
Boil the stock and add the corn flour, whisking constantly until it
has thickened. Add the fish and re-heat gently so to not break the
fish up further. Stir through the parsley then taste for seasoning
and then spoon into the vol au vent cases.
Varga Bar - Swedish Wolf in Espresso Coloured Clothes
Varga Bar Espresso. Corner of Wilson
St and Erskineville Road, Newtown
I went there today with a friend of
mine that I have’t seen in years because we’re both too goddamn
lazy to meet up but we managed today. He’s very punctual though,
when he said he was running approximatley 12 minutes late, he was
exactly 12 minutes late. Good work. At least it gave me extra time
to get some descent location shots of the outside and plenty of
time to check out the hot blond barrista and the clientelé.
The thing that surprised me here, wasn’t so much the fact that what
we were served was fantastic, but it was creative. I’ve tried a lot
of cafés in Newtown but this was the first time I’ve seen a
honeycomb and belgian chocolate affogato (espresso with a scoop of
ice cream) on a menu and the cakes we had were delicious and well
presented. I had the banana cake, unfortunately a little dry in
places but delicious none the less. The other cake, the chocolate
and raspberry mousse cake was denser than you’d expect, more cakey
than moussey, but the affogato. Smooth, sweet, delicious with goopy
melted chocolate in the bottom of the glass topped with a sprinkle
of violet crumble.
Honeycomb and Chocolate Affogato and
Chocolate and Raspberry Mousse Cake
I’m going to have to come back and try out the food menu.
For once, I had a healthy breakfast
The texture of this was pretty interesting with the soft succulant fruit and sticky honey and the chewy turkish bread and it’s carbonised toasted edges it made of a quite satisfying meal. It just goes to show that simple fresh fruit is really worth while.
Turkish toast with banana and
strawberries, honey and mint
That's not strawberry blond! He's a ginger!
About to be eaten ginger
The wonderful people at Gingerbread Folk make organic,
free range gingerbread people, house kits, flowers, christmas
decorations and custom made gingers for special and corporate
events. Keeping the environmentaly concious theme they even package
their individual bloodnuts in compostable plastic!
As they’re made of all natural ingredients there aren’t any
preservatives in them so don’t expect to keep these for months on
end like you can with commercial ginger bread (next christmas,
check the expiary date on the gingerbread in supermarkets, it can
keep for years, that can’t be good). Lucky they’re tasty and beg to
be gobbled.
The box! The box!
The first thing you notice once you’ve moved the box into the kitchen isn’t the volume of food, the convenience or even the value for money, it’s the sweet smell that almost overwhelmes you as you break the seal on the box and lift the lid. It really is amazing stuff in there. As you can see below you can get everything from a whole rockmelon, an egg plant, green beans, sugar snap peas and a bag of baby spinach, salad leaves and a whole lot more.
Box Fresh Delivery
I’ve done a comparison and even if you
disreguard the fact that this is restaurant quality food, you can’t
get this amount of food for less than the $49 expecially if you
want it delivered. Coles Online for example was $95! On top of the
fruit and veg, you can also pick up a good selection of cheese,
jams and even a meat tray from Hudson meat. Give them a go.
This weeks box had all sorts of fun stuff:
Vine ripened tomatoes
Broccoli
Green Beans
Potatoes
Red Onion
Brown Onion
Avocado
Ginger
Green Chilli
Garlic
Corriander
Mint
Parsley
Carrots
Field Mushrooms
Egg Plant
Sugar Snap Peas
Baby Spinach
Mixed Salad Leaves
Red Capsicum
Kiwi Fruit
Carela Pears
Fuji Apples
Oranges
Bananas
Rockmelon
Lemon
The Illegitimate Dumpling King
So after meeting some wonderful company at the station we began walking up the eastern side of King Street until we started to realise that we were almost of restaurants. Just at that point we were standing next to The Dumpling King (194 King Street, Newtown). Declaring my love for dumplings we headed in, sat down and went over the menu looking for some rare and tasty dumplings I'd never heard of before. Bitterly disappointed given the name of the place there were only four dumplings! Northern Meat Style, steamed or pan fried, and Vegetable Dumpling, steamed or pan fried. How can you call yourself the Dumpling King if you only have two types of dumplings?! We decided to order the shallot pancake and the meat bun and of course, both types of dumplings - steamed.
You
won’t find many dumplings at The Dumpling King (194 King Street,
Newtown)
Twenty
minutes later the pancake (that I don't think had even met a
shallot) arrived along with the pan fried flavourless northern meat
buns. Chewing through those and washing them down with some weak
green tea (from a bag) we sat and chatted. Pleasant and engaging
conversation, thankfully, which made the next forty-five minutes
waiting for our dumplings bearable.
Eventually, after physically getting up and asking the wait-staff
that had ignored us since we ordered where the rest of our meal
was, two steamer baskets turned up with an excuse that the Dumpling
King had run out of dumplings and he had to make them fresh! Two
things are wrong with that, one - the DUMPLING KING ran out of
dumplings; and two - if he did have some on hand they wouldn't have
been fresh! I know I'm probably arguing for two different sides
here, do I want fresh dumplings or do I want quick service but
that's not the point. We weren't the only table that didn't get
their meals, I noticed two or three other tables having to stop the
wait-staff and ask where their food was.
At the end of the night, I have to admit the dumplings were
actually quite nice, but the experience was terrible with poor
service and a promise of a plethora of dumplings that just don't
exist. The rest of the menu looked quite uninspired and with the
variety available on King Street I'm not going to be in any hurry
to visit the illegitimate Dumpling King again. I'd rather go to
Happy Chef.