And now, The SMH 2008 Good Food Guide Awards
A couple of places lost a hat which always causes a stir, but Sydney now has seven three hat restaurants, offering truly fine dining. Spoiled are we not?

The full list is here online but it's always better to buy the book and read the comments, (and the reasons for dropping hats, or giving them).

Country NSW never seems to get above one hat, which suggests as much city centric reviewers as any real failings in some of the venues which have values that are often worth more, ie. local produce, true seasonal menus etc. I guess it depends on what diners or reviewers value.

REGIONAL NSW ONE HAT
Artespresso (Canberra), ashcrofts (Blackheath), Bacchus (Newcastle), Caveau (Wollongong), Courgette (Canberra), Darley's (Katoomba), dish (Byron Bay), Eschalot (Berrima), 55 on Collins (Kiama), The Journeyman (Berrima), Lolli Redini (Orange), Lochiel House (Kurrajong Heights), Neila (Cowara), No. 2 Oak St (Bellingen), The Old George & Dragon (East Maitland), Ottoman Cuisine (Canberra), Restaurant Como (Blaxland), Restaurant II (Newcastle), The River (Moruya), Rock (Pokolbin), Tonic (Millthorpe), Vulcans (Blackheath), Zest (Nelson Bay)

The Good Living cover reflects the request for a chef's hat interpretation in food by selected restaurants. There's some clever ones, but I still like the Epicure cover best.

Nettles

The article I wrote about stinging nettles for SMH Good Living appeared in the same issue as the awards. Sue Bennett the editor said she'd taken out the chatty bits (that's what editors other than me do. I ask for more).

Have a look at the SMH version, and I'll put up my original one with added comments and recipes on the new Regional Food Mark II which I'm determined to have up this weekend.

Fred Harden 5 September 07

The Age 2008 Good Food Guide
There were the usual surprises and gasps of indignation in response to this year's awards of GFG Chefs Hat ratings. But I gasped at the terrific photograph by Age staffer Rob Banks, and how well it was used in the Epicure cover. That shot, and the empty table with just the food in the wrap-around. I know adspace is valuable but this is just fun to look at and makes you feel good about the publication.  The Last Supper idea has been used lots of times but this is one of the good ones. Neil Perry gets the JC position and as Rockpool Bar & Grill won best Restaurant of the Year, that's a nice touch, as is the highlight emphasis on him.

Left to right: Tony Rogalsky, Tansy Good, John Flower, Maria Bourke, Shannon Bennett, Neil Perry, Michael Lambie, Paul Wilson standing, Gilbert Lau, Phillipe Mouchel standing, Stephanie Alexander, Hermann Schneider, Gloria Staley. See The Age online story for more details.

Of Regional Food country interest, Lake House (Daylesford), Range (Myrtleford), Simone's Restaurant (Bright) and Stefano's (Mildura) all were awarded Two Hats.

One Hat went to Annie Smithers Bistrot (Kyneton), Bella Vedere (Coldstream), Dining Room at the Flinders (Flinders), Farmers Arms Hotel (Daylesford), Healesville Hotel (Healesville), Merrijig Inn (Port Fairy), Montalto (Red Hill South), Neilsons (Traralgon), The Outpost Retreat (Noojee), Pettavel Winery & Restaurant (Waurn Ponds), Royal George Hotel (Kyneton), Sourcedining (Albury), Teller (Mooroopna), Wardens Food & Wine (Beechworth). Well done.

Ok, get out your road atlas and start planning your next trip. We are.

Fred Harden 29 August 07

Travellers' Tales
Over a weekend of brunching with various friends, friends of friends and business associates, we were treated to travellers’ tales from the ridiculously sublime to the sublimely ridiculous.

A couple recently returned from OS had stopped over in Abu Dhabi to see friends. Apart from the blast-furnace-like heat, the fabulous designer shopping and

the fascinating classified ads in the local press ...
Porsche Carrera, new, $80,000 – unwanted gift
...they were very taken by the 7-star Emirates Palace Hotel Not that they stayed there – just dropped by for a sticky and a cappuccino. The tab for four?  AUD$80. It just may have been because, instead of the usual powdered chocolate on top, these cappuccini came sprinkled with shreds of (ahem) 24 carat gold!  Presumably this was at the Al Majlis and Caviar Bar, which also offers specialties ‘from gold-drizzled chocolates to tantalising teas’.

The same hotel offers The Palace Brunch, where the Curée (sic) Josephine Perrier 1995 Champagne flows freely and the nosh includes goose liver pate, oysters, lobster and other delicacies from all over the world. At a mere AUD$120 a head, it’s a steal. Rooms at the Emirates Palace start at around $465 a double with their summer special rate, while suites start at around $2000.

So much for the sublime. Now for the ridiculous. A friend and colleague had flown from Sydney to Canberra on the Qantas Saturday 8.45 service. We were meeting for brunch, so he wasn’t looking for a hearty airline breakfast. However, the solitary chocolate-chip cookie that turned up seemed an odd offering at that early hour.

Things went from bad to worse, however. On checking the use-by date on the packaging, he discovered said cookie should have been consumed by June ’06! He craned his neck, unsuccessfully trying to spot the date on the packaging his neighbour had discarded. However, since the poor chap had already consumed the biscuit, our friend opted for silence, rather than cause alarm. 

Open letter to Neil Perry:

Dear Neil,

I know your Melbourne restaurant has just been awarded a gong by Gourmet Traveller Magazine. Possibly the strain of getting this venture up to award-winning standard has temporarily distracted you from your duties as the culinary capo at Qantas.

I realise you don’t actually bake the cookies served in economy class with your own hands, and the breakfast in business class may well have been superb. However, as the Person With Whom The Buck Stops, perhaps you should think twice about lending your name to an organisation that considers a chocolate cookie more than 12 months past its use-by date as appropriate breakfast fare for the poor buggers in steerage.

Kind regards….etc.

Jan O'Connell 28 August 07

A rosé by any other name
If you were reading the SMH Good Living (May 15), did you notice Huon Hooke's Wine column titled Snob Factor?, It's about how Australian wine is no longer 'flavour of the month' in Britain. The proposition was that we'd been too successful with cheap wines like the Rosemount Diamond Label, and Jacobs Creek and the market has grown up and our premium wines are passed over in preference for Spanish or even Californian wine.

The prices that Huon quoted from his recent visit could be a reason, and he mentioned a bottle of Leeuwin Estate 2001 Art Series Chardonnay costing £105 in a restaurant. (It costs £25.50 at Fortnum and Mason, and around $80 here). That's good for us, but for our export market, it is obviously causing stress. But that's not what I wanted to write about.

The Leeuwin Estate is a great Chardonnay, but what's the rosé reference in this blog title? Well, Huon went on to mention some Australian wines available at Smiths of Smithfield, a fashionable restaurant wine bar (proudly proclaiming 'raw concrete' - in the decor not for dinner). Huon warned "make sure your plastic is well charged first: Charles Melton's Rose of Virginia pink (retailing for $20-ish at home) will set you back £30 ($75) a bottle."

Now, you might have thought that the Virginia in the wine title was just a pun on the US state. We discovered it wasn't at a great Slow Food dinner we had in the Barossa a year or so back. The meal was cooked by Virginia, Charlie's wife, (that's her at left) and served up by their daughters and friends. The Barossa Slow Food weekend and the dinner at Charles and Virginia's was going to be featured in 'the next issue' of RF, but I'll have to do something with the images, maybe a photo-diary, as they capture a terrific event against the background of a late night picking at the Melton vineyard.

After dashing in and out as the tractors brought in the shiraz grapes and the light fell, Charlie told stories and explained the wine names such as Nine Popes (a mix up in him translating Chateauneuf du Pape). When Virginia was out of the room, he confided that it was the best thing he could have done for his relationship to name his rosé after her. As well as a nice pun,  he said it made up for a lot of things that a winemaker's wife suffers. It is a good rose as well, as you'd expect.

Have a look at their website Charles Melton Wines. The design is slick but as you read it, you'll find it much more chatty and will give you an insight into the man, woman and the team.

Fred Harden 19 May 07