ONE

For lunch we booked a table at ONE – 1 Broke Road, an architecturally amazing building with cellar door, a café and a restaurant. Live music greeted us on arrival but once we walked across the terrace, through the café into the dining room a peaceful, modern space greeted us. We were ushered to our table and presented the menus. The ONE restaurant is a fantastic space. Quality cane chairs, colourful cushions, solid wooden tables, good table and glassware and lots of creams and pastels warm up the almost cathedral-like space. An open kitchen provides an interesting and lively focal point at one end of the room. Light and airy, the experience is enhanced by a view though cane blinds towards an open field, bordered by a row of pencil pines and pots full of colourful flowers. Very Mediterranean.

The menu, an interesting read of East and West promised a lot. We ordered the ‘Crispy Escargots Beignets, served in a delicate garlic scented broth’ and the ‘Fine Crisp Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart, served with Kalamata olives and rocket salad’. For mains we ordered ‘Barbeque Pork on Stir Fried Rice Noodles, Shitake mushrooms & bean sprouts; Vietnamese style’ and a ‘Salad Nicoise’.

A wine list was not offered until I asked for it and bread was not offered at all. I eventually figured out that bread was available, even made in-house, but at $ 5.00 a basket. The wine list was short, full of spelling mistakes, unimaginative and less than a handful of wines offered by the glass. In a major Australian wine area it is simply not acceptable to get the names of local wines and other Australian wine regions wrong!

The snail beignets were ok but the broth can trace its heritage all the way back to either Maggi or Knorr. The tart rather clumsy and quite bland. The pork would have rated quite well if I ate it in the café next door, but in the restaurant it simply did not live up to expectations. The same for the Salad Nicoise. Attention to detail show up in the quality of the produce but sadly, the finished result is not what I care to eat. Value for money is reasonable, service is good, the space is great, but as has been our experience in the Hunter in general, the sum of all the individual components adds up to a lot less than you would reasonably hope to expect.

Score: 5/10

For more information or bookings:

One

1 Broke Road

Pokolbin NSW 2321

Tel.: 02 4998 7188