Satsuma Reprise

The last time we were at Satsuma was more than 3 years ago, and it was only a late Friday night at work that brought us back there for a very late dinner recently. We were pleased, however, to discover that the quality was as good as we remembered. The only problem was that everything came too quickly, and that we didn't have enough time to finish one dish before moving on to the next, which to me, is pretty important for an izakaya where you want the breadth and space to enjoy one dish without worrying about the next one getting cold. We gave this feedback to our (very friendly) server, so let's hope they take it on board.

The usual starter of fresh veggies with miso dip.  

Looking nice and colourful up close

Mixed mushrooms with garlic and butter. Yummy but not so good once cold.

Fried rice with seaweed and octopus. Yummy, but not so good once cold.

Short rib skewers - one done medium to the husband's liking, the other medium-well to my liking. Excellent.

Grilled chicken wings were as good as we recall. Crispy skin with moist meat. Top marks.

Chicken thigh and tsukune - these were fairly standard. But not nice once cold (you're getting my drift).

This was fabulous- mentaiko tofu baked with cheese on top.

Perhaps the yummiest dish of the evening. But not good once cold.

We also had a grilled fish - I can't recall what this was, but I think it was a spanish mackerel since they had run out of yellowtail. Decent, fresh, but perhaps not the best fish for grilling.

Grilled squid- plain, decent, but not nice when eaten cold.

All the dishes came out in the space of about 20 minutes, which was crazy since the 2 of us were struggling to identify which could be eaten cold and which dishes absolutely had to be eaten hot. The table also ran out of space. This was a perfectly good, yummy, high-quality izakaya meal that was marred by the memory of rushing to finish the food, which was a pity because dinner set us back $150. Hopefully things get better next time round.

Celcius, Adelaide

Before our trip to Adelaide, we dutifully went through the Australian Gourmet Traveller guide for Adelaide, and Celcius caught our eye for a special night out since the it didn't seem feasible to go to the other places that were recommended (Penfolds appeared too expensive, the Manse was too far away, no one from Vincenzo picked up the phone nor replied emails, and we couldn't get dinner bookings at Chianti).  

We had read that the degustation menus were the highlight of the menu, but the entire table needed to have the same order, so our earlier plan for one of us to have the 5 course and the other to have the 8 course didn't work. As a result, we both went for the 8 course meal which cost A$130 per person - unfortunately without matching wines since we didn't dare to risk getting breath tested. The waitress' recommendation for an Eden Valley Riesling, and a Barossa Valley Shiraz+Grenache+Mataro, however, went extremely well with the food. 

The dinner started off on an interesting note, with the bread coming with smoked butter in a jar - when we opened it, the smoke came out. The flavour of the butter was slightly smoky, and we were feeling pretty positive about the evening.  

We also ordered a serve of pork crackling on the side, and were rather surprised to see full-on pork skin. But this was so light and crispy, not too oily, and excellent with my riesling. Beer would have been much better though.

A close up of the air bubbles in the pork skin.

The first course was "blue swimmer crab, green gazpacho, pomegranate" (the chef must be a man of few words). I had no idea what the leaves were. This was refreshing, but slightly monolingual in terms of flavour, with it tasting like a tomato broth that happened to have a crab swimming in it.

Next up: Venison tartare, beetroot, cured egg, herb emulsion. This was interesting because of the raw venison, but there weren't enough herbs or spices to make the dish anything more than a basic composition.

3rd course: charred sweet corn ravioli, basil, tomato, woodside ash. Now things were looking very colourful, but this was like a slightly anorexic pesto with a lot of corn. The ash just looked rather odd. The pasta wasn't al dente either.

4th: Market fish, squid ink, potato, fennel, calamari.

The market fish (I forget what it was now - bream? barramundi?) was simply grilled. So were the fennel and calamari. The flavour of the squid ink didn't come through either. Frankly, I would expect something a whole lot more exciting than grilled fish for a degustation meal. 

5th: Quail, boudin noir, apple, bacon. Now, this was a really pretty composition, but the quail was over done, and we didn't take to the pig's blood tofu.

6th:  Coorong Angus sirloin with baby root vegetables.This looked like a simple dish stacked in a complicated way.

When this arrived, we declared it as the most enjoyable dish of the evening, although it was something that any other decent restaurant could have done well.

One of the desserts, however, was completely different story. I'm tempted to suggest that the chef forget about meats and veggies, and just focus on this dessert because this was  pretty mindblowing. This was called lemon curd, blackberries, white chocolate and passionfruit. WOW. The lemon curd was dehydrated, and melted in our mouths. The sorbet was deliciously tangy and balanced the white chocolate fabulously.

This was called "peach and raspberries tart, chamomile". Not sure where the chamomile was, since we couldn't taste it, but this was back to normal again for us - the pastry was too soft, and it was just another pretty composition without any wow factor.

Although it was very pretty.

We threw in another Tim Adams Botrytis Riesling, and the bill was pretty...for lack of a better word, expensive, especially when we were expecting to be wowed. The service was not that great - there was only one waitress who seemed to know what was going on, and she was flanked by one rather slow woman and another rather dismissive man. Unfortunately one excellent person can't work the entire floor. All in, we weren't too disappointed - the food was fresh, to be fair, and pretty decent, but definitely not worth a repeat visit and certainly not stunning enough to warrant taking the degustation menu. 

http://www.celsiusrestaurant.com.au/

Miso Pork Udon

I was craving the miso pork soup from Mikuni pretty badly one day, but even with the FAR card, it was going to be an expensive meal. So I decided to try my own version, adapted into a one-pot dish with udon, with a few different recipes from the internet and a whole lot of luck. We made a trip to Isetan to get the stuff, and inevitably ended up forgetting some - but all turned out well, in the end.

These were the sauces I got - the most important ingredients being dashi, since I was too lazy to boil my own, and miso. There was red and yellow miso, and I took a chance with the yellow one. Thankfully it turned out right, and I also had a pot of home-made pork and chicken stock boiling as a soup base, which worked out pretty well.

I bought most of the Japanese veggies from Isetan as well, but unfortunately forgot about negi and daikon. The next best thing to do was to run to NTUC nearby to get leek and white radish, which turned out relatively well. 

I used a combination of streaky and lean US pork, from the Isetan meat section. They have a surprisingly affordable range of shabu shabu and sukiyaki meats.

Basically the leek, carrot, and cabbage went into the stock first, and I only added the mushrooms, spinach and sliced pork towards the end.  The miso needed to be strained in, and I realised that not much was needed for the soup to become salty. The entire dish was very yummy but not very pretty, so I only managed a tiny snapshot. A great meal - tasty, fulfilling, and best of all, very affordable.

And made even better when accompanied by really good sake. 

Chianti Classico, Adelaide

We had tried to get dinner bookings at Chianti Classico for our final night in Adelaide, but they were sadly full - which was to be expected, since we had heard such good things about it. Thankfully our flight out of Adelaide the following day wasn't until 5pm, and so we managed to get lunch reservations.

Crusty bread, olives and olive oil - excellent right from the start.

We were seated in the front of the restaurant, and ordered (what else) a glass of Chianti Classico and a South Australian Riesling.

We started with an antipasto platter, which had mortadella, rice balls, pecorino, crostini with salted cod, figs, anchovies and pickled vegetables. 

This was an amazing combination, and the wines were great with the food. The figs were sweet, the cheese+mortadella combo was super tasty and the baccala crostini with radicchio was amazing. 

The rice balls were excellent - crusty on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside.

For our mains, we had a fish stew that came with mussels, fish, prawns and scallops in a bisque also infused with lobster. The seafood flavours were so intense that we mopped up every last drop with bread. It was way too small for something so good.  

The husband wanted to try penne with Italian sausage after hearing it was a daily special - this was comfort food at its best, and to be frank, I would have gone for something finer like a squid ink pasta at such an established place. It was definitely good, but I daresay that Papa Ginos on Lygon St could have come up with something a little less nice for a whole lot cheaper.

The black angus ragu with fettucine was pretty damn good though, and brilliant with the Chianti Classico that the husband picked (no idea which vintage from which vineyard).

We were too stuffed for dessert, but they served up an amazing cafe latte that we had to try after smelling the beans being ground. We would be happy to make a return visit to Adelaide just for this restaurant.

http://www.chianticlassico.com.au/

Adelaide Sightseeing

We had a few days to wander around Adelaide and do interesting stuff - it was a great holiday and the family had a great time chilling out and doing different things in various places.

Down at the beach watching the sunset

Wine tasting at D'Arenberg, McLaren Vale

 The view at Lloyds Olive Farm - the lavender smelt heavenly

Hot chocolate at Bracegirdles, which has taken over the 190 shop along the main street of McLaren Vale

The most sinful chocolate brownie

 

 The husband's raspberry and chocolate cake

The most amazing iced chocolate - a meal in itself

Back at the beach during the day time

 

Wine tasting at Leconfield

Lunch at Hahndorf - smoked pork hock and sausages with a pork chop and mashed potatoes - great with dark beer

Smoked pork hock with sauerkraut and a pretzel - we really enjoyed this lunch

 Strawberry picking at the Beerenberg Farm

The view at Victor Harbour - absolutely stunning.