Text 9326, 111 rader
Skriven 2006-12-26 16:19:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Cleland 755
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Carol had to have her kangaroo and koala fix, so we went
first thing (it was supposed to be 35 (in the mid-90s) later
on) to Cleland Wildlife Park, where we were met by a power
failure that prevented the shop from operating (thank
goodness) but also meant that the credit card machine was
not working, so our smallish supply of cash was somewhat
drained. We spent our allotted three hours or so visiting
our favorite animals: the wombats were hiding, and the
Tasmanian devils were on vacation, but Glen has a delightful
little video of the pangolins, and somewhere there are
incriminating photos of me communing with the wallabies
without a knife and fork in my hands; then to Bridgewater
Mill, which I'd heard a lot about but was unable to fit a
booking in on either of my previous trips to Adelaide.

I think we were sized up immediately, to my initial
amusement and then chagrin.

We weren't important enough to get amuses; to be fair, only
half the tables got them - a couple of larger parties, one
a foursome who dropped names shamelessly before the staff,
one of about eight fairly drunken nobs from the city; also
a pair the woman of whom looked like she was a model or
something, and another pair who although quite slatternly-
looking were treated throughout with kid gloves. You could
tell I was underwhelmed when I was looking at what everyone
else was eating and not noticing my own food much.

Carol started with the tomato terrine, a nice-tasting but
to me not interesting dish that was accompanied by zucchini
flowers stuffed with buffalo mozzarella; Glen and I both
had a peculiar composed dish of grilled scallops, roast pork
belly and, sweet-sour oyster mushrooms - the menu described
the dish as having sweet-sour pork belly and regular oyster
mushrooms; it was fine this way, though the pork belly was
not done so nicely as a Chinese restaurant would have fixed
it. The ingredients were good, but there was no logic that
melded the components. A fried enoki topping was charming
and almost succeeded in doing so.

Glen's roast duck breast and twice-cooked leg were what you
would expect at any restaurant in the civilized world; it
was quite average and would have been a welcome surprise
in Alice Springs was in this self-styled oasis of
sophistication merely another ho-hum duck two ways.

Carol's Kangaroo Island chicken breast with Thai-tasting
vegetables (described as "coconut-green mango salad") was
perfectly fine chicken breast, a little better perhaps than
supermarket chicken, with nice vegetables, especially as
Carol loves coconut dishes. The skin was a tad flabby in
spots, a constant danger if one is trying to do a chicken
breast so it's right and moist.

My few meager slices of saddle of venison were done properly
rare and were served over wilted greens with bacon: a decent
but not inspired dish, the greens (supposedly cavolo nero
but in fact just ordinary greens) with bacon being the best
part of the plate.

The vegetables for the table were beans, broccoli, and sweet
potatoes. They were fine.

There was this odd composed dessert of apple something,
butterscotch ice cream, and "botrytis gelee," again things
thrown together without rime or reason, individually decent,
together decent and no more. The gelee was made from that
Sharefarmers wine that we'd tried in the tasting room.

Instead of which I returned to the top of the menu with
a "confit of beef filet" with kelp and carrot-daikon
salad - this turned out to be a slow-cooked-to-medium-rare
and thus flabby and tasteless piece of meat; the vegetables
were the star, almost justifying the dish, but when you see
me eating around the meat to get to the carrots and
seaweed, you know there's something wrong in the kitchen.

Wines:

Carol had several glasses of Bridgewater Mill Brut, a
quite savory bubbly with flavors of honey and wood, going
to nice fruit and a medium finish. 

I started off with glasses of the Bridgewater Mill Viognier
04 and the Petaluma Viognier 05 - the former had an
understated floral nose and opening, tropical fruit on the
palate, and a weakish floral finish; the latter with very
faint tropical fruit with a lot of surprising citrus and
Sauvignon Blanc-iness. With the venison I had the Petaluma
Coonawara Cabernet-Merlot 03, a big wine with good legs, a
plum, anise, five-spicy nose and a plum-cherry palate. It
was slightly sweeter than I thought it would be, no big
problem. With my "dessert" I had the Coonawara Merlot 04,
lots of menthol-eucalyptus on the nose, chocolate-vanilla
and plums in the mouth, and a long plummy finish.

Glen stuck with Hahn Premium, a fairly tasty lager
with good hopping but a bit starchy for my taste.

We weren't important enough to get petits fours, which I
believe is a standard offering at places such as this, if
you haven't displeased the staff, even if you don't get
coffee, which we should have done but didn't.

The bill was too high for the experience, although just
moderately high by city standards.


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