The husband made a booking in Oct 2013 for a Jan 2014 dinner reservation at Attica, which made it to No. 21 on the San Pellegrino list. We also had very high expectations for the meal, especially after watching the MasterChef contestants trying to recreate Ben Shewry's Plight of the Bumblebees which looked simply amazing on tv. We had been fortunate enough to try Andre at No. 38, and Narisawa at No. 20. Consequently, we were expecting something more similar to Narisawa than Andre.
When we arrived, we had a bit of a shock as to how basic it looked in the middle of a streetblock within a simple Melbourne suburb.
The view from our seats; we had the table right next to the front door.
The waiter arrived with macadamia nut cream and smoked oil for dipping bread in. They bake their own organic rye bread in-house, and it was excellent. The quandong nuts were just for show.
The amuse bouche was a dip of fermented corn with mushroom leaves from their garden, named for their mushroom-like flavour, as well as fermented carrots. They were right, the leaves tasted just like mushrooms.
One would never be able to guess, just looking at the leaves.
This was walnut purée with shaved mushrooms, with a creamy, rich texture.
Up close. Such a pretty dish.
How one dipped the leaves into the corn dip- it was impossible to avoid getting fingers dirty.
Next up, fried mussels with sea vegetables presented with a mussel shell. The mussels were fresh and sweet, but unfortunately the most interesting thing on the plate was the painted shell.
A close up- lovely presentation. But the idea of a fried mussel did not really excite me.
The second course was snow crab, which arrived covered in leaves.
The leaves were blanched sorrel, sweetened with mandarin, and the crab had toasted buckwheat. Interesting combination of flavours.
This was my favourite dish of the evening. Marron with kale and tarragon, with shredded chicken thigh with an onion and pork sauce.
The marron- almost like a cross between a langoustine, crayfish and large prawn, was deliciously sweet and the chicken-kale-tarragon mixture accompanied it brilliantly.
Next up, a dish that was lauded by critics but one which I felt was quite a letdown- potato baked in the earth which it was grown in. It was a delicious, sweet-tasting potato. But one simply does not get excited over a baked potato. It was accompanied by goats curd seasoned with ground coffee and coconut husk, but ultimately you still call a spud a spud. (I thought that was brilliant!!)
This was cucumber with a sauce of Burnet, which had vinegar. It was grilled with cucumber oil, garlic and peas and topped with holy flax. Quite a nice dish, with the sweetness and flavours of the vegetables coming out nicely.
Portarlington King Goerge Whiting wrapped in paper bark and grilled with pearl oyster meat. It looked like opeh, a large whitish leaf traditionally used to wrap food in Singapore (primarily fried prawn noodles).
This was pretty tasty. Nothing to shout about though, unfortunately. The fish was fresh, sweet, flavorful, but one would expect that from a restaurant ranked No. 21 in the world.
The meat dish was a South Australian kangaroo fillet dressed with quandong skins, accompanied by a salad with 15 different leaves from their herb and vegetable garden.
The kangaroo was beautiful, seared perfectly and yet sufficiently rare to be moist and tender.
And yes, we counted 15. But seriously when the dish emphasizes the counting of 15 leaves rather than the combination of the 15 flavours, something is slightly odd.
The waitress invited us to go round to the back herb garden, which was a really nice touch. Every table got a tour of the garden, which had numerous herbs and vegetables used in the dishes we had.
And an even better surprise.....
We were served ice creams! A raspberry liquorice sorbet dipped in chocolate and freeze dried raspberry. Absolutely beautiful.
The first dessert was called blueberries, vinegar and fresh cheese, which came with apple powder, organic blueberries and chrysanthemum and liquorice leaves. Extremely pleasant. We loved the combination of the different flavours.
Such a pretty dish too.
I forgot to take a picture of this before demolishing it, but it was titled raw strawberry jam and had meringue and sorbet. It was nice, but we were dreaming of the plight of the bumblebees and therefore were slightly disappointed.
The dinner ended off with caramel-filled chocolate eggs inspired, crudely phrased by me, by Ben Shewry's father's paintings of the pukeko birds in New Zealand. Very pretty.
And yummy too.
Our verdict: the meal was definitely good quality, but unfortunately lacked the wow factor that Narisawa, Eleven Madison and even Andre had for us. Possibly the San Pellegrino judges might have had a different menu, but this was quite a letdown in our opinion. While foraging was an interesting concept, I personally had some trouble at the thought of paying $190 for an 8 course meal to eat bush tucker, garden herbs and baked potatoes, no matter how fresh, exquisite, and delicately composed.
- 74 Glen Eira Road
Ripponlea, Victoria 3185
+61 3 9530 0111 - attica.com.au
