Sourcedining

By Franz Scheurer

Consisting of two rooms, a dining room and a courtyard, this small and focused restaurant feels more like big city than country town. Efficient staff move seemingly unhurried amongst discerning diners sitting on low chairs, eating of low, double-clothed tables in hard surfaced, yet warm surrounds. The colour scheme is olive and terracotta and if you’re wearing browns, beige or greens you’ll feel right at home.

The menu is short, concise and appetising and the wine list is excellent and ‘engross-worthy’. We started with ‘Warm Clyde River rock oysters with xo sauce’ ($3 each), terrific, salty, slightly hot starters. Here is where we noticed that they bake all of their own breads, churn their own butter and make their own XO sauce. I am not sure pork belly traditionally belongs into an XO sauce yet it was a good combination with the oysters. Next we tried the ‘Warm potato and smoked eel salad with dill crème fraîche and Melba toast’ ($15) and ‘Avocado tartare with crispy fried quail egg and dukkah’ ($15). The tartare was terrific, presented well and the flavours worked. The eel was ‘bony’ and although attractively plated it was not a dish to remember. For mains we ordered the ‘Olive oil poached Lake Hume trout with pommes almandines’ ($32) and the ‘Hot smoked venison loin with spatzle and mushroom custard’ ($32). The trout, quite cooked through, was moist, soft and gorgeous and the almond potatoes too dry and crumbly. The venison was very heavily smoked, but it worked well with the sweet reduction it was served in, and the Spätzle were superb. A bottle of Domaine A, Lady A Fumé Blanc worked admirably with the food. Although a couple of desserts looked appetizing we wanted to share a cheese platter. When it arrived at perfect eating temperature (we guessed they might have helped it along a bit in the kitchen) we were spoiled by an Indigo Camembert made by Paula Jenkin, a wonderfully nutty and crumbly French Cantal Ente-Deux and a fantastic, raw milk Roquefort Black Label. The cheeses were served with date jam, carrot salad and a celery heart salad with walnuts and an assortment of freshly baked breads. Pretty cool! A 500ml bottle of MR Moscatel 2005 Mountain Wine, D.O. Malaga, from Spain proved the perfect, sweet but non-cloying accompaniment.

All in all a very successful night and a lot more in every way than we dared hope for. Keep up the good work!

Score: 7/10

Sourcedining

664 Dean Street

Albury NSW

Tel.: 02 6041 1288