By Franz Scheurer
Insider information tells us that this restaurant, at the bottom of the old town near the busy port, is the place to eat in Albany! It is BYO and, thankfully, right across the road from the biggest bottle shop I’ve seen. So we arrive well-armed with a bottle of Picardy Merlot. The restaurant is divided into alcoves separated by gauzy curtains, the décor is minimal and the cutlery motifs on the wall are reminiscent of those at Assiette in Sydney.
An amuse gueule, served in a shot glass, of “Marron and trout bisque with fennel foam’ gets us started.
We order the ‘Roast apple filled with sweet chilli braised duck, seared
scallops, soft herb salad’ ($19) and the ‘Trout two ways: smoked terrine,
tempura battered trout cakes, sauce gribiche’, ($17) and the ‘Fresh bread with
olive oil, Lurpak butter’. The duck is good, if a tad sweet, though the salad
(too acidic for my palate) could be said to provide a balance, and the
perfectly-seared scallops are still glassy in the centre. The trout is
excellent and the bread works well for mopping up.
A mango sorbet served as a between course palate cleanser, although technically a superb sorbet, was too sweet and cloying to work as a cleanser.
For mains we tried the ‘Wild mushroom risotto, asparagus, English spinach, truffle micro salad ($25), and the ‘Whole deboned spatchcock, stuffed onions, potato galette, green peas, morels ($36), asking the kitchen to leave out the truffle oil. The risotto was excellent (although it seemed hard to believe that it was cooked a-la-minute as the waitress told us). The spatchcock was superb, moist, tender meat with lots of morel flavour and the mushy peas served under a potato galette worked a treat.
We skipped desserts but the ‘Liquorice all-sorts ice cream, sambuca jelly, star anise soup’ sounded terrific.
Value for money was excellent. Service was friendly and prepared to go the extra mile (our waitress went back to the kitchen several times to check answers to questions). I’ll definitely be back, if I’m in Albany again!
Score: 6.5/10
For more information:
The Wild Duck
Shop 5
112 York Street
Albany 6330
Tel.: 08 9842 2554