Last week, I had
the rare double pleasure of discovering an excellent fine dining venue and a
fellow über aficionado of gourmet delights.
After a conference in Brisbane, I headed out for dinner with fellow
conference goers Cameron and Katie (who like me also happened to be the final
stragglers at the post-conference drinks).
Earlier that day, I’d googled the “best restaurants in Brisbane” and
found a Courier Mail article which offered a top 10 list. Cameron, from Australia’s gourmet capital
Melbourne, was naturally up for some good food. Katie, the local, helped us
pick the closest restaurant on that list within walking distance – Urbane on
181 Mary Street, Brisbane.
Urbane sports a
discreet entrance, particularly at night, and when you walk in, it is a
minimalist oasis of calm – dark shadows and pools of light – with the tables
set far apart from each other to further extend the feeling that you almost
have the place to yourself. The service is discreet, calm and sophisticated; the two Sarahs looking after us executing an excellent tandem act of bringing us food, presenting and explaining the dishes, making sure we remained watered (or wined, as was more the case) and never being far away. And they never, ever avoided making eye contact or pretended not to notice us when we needed something. Let me digress for a pet gripe: waiters who avoid eye contact are one of the most annoying things I frequently experience in Perth restaurants, even those who self-style themselves as "fine dining" venues (if you expect me to wave my arms around like a bloody aircraft carrier flight-deck operator just for the privilege of asking you to bring me the bill, you can forget about any kind of tip!).
 |
| Kingfish Sashimi |
We ordered the 5
course degustation (although I was sorely tempted by the 9 course marathon
offering, my fellow diners were not hungry enough). But it was kind of 11 courses anyway, since we
received 6 canapé-sized pre-dinner morsels in succession while we waited for
the main event to begin. All were
delightful, served upon unique and clever vessels (such as a pot of pebbles and a wooden rack of test tubes); with some exquisitely prepared and presented (like the Kingfish Sashimi).
 |
Duck consommé & tongue!
|
These canapés kept us going while the kitchen prepared the main courses; my favourite of the lot was the richly flavoured duck consommé served in test
tubes, accompanied by a crispy dry duck tongue (!) that had the taste and
texture of popcorn. As anyone who’s been
adventurous with dim sum in Hong Kong would know, the texture of a duck tongue
is moist, crunchy and gristle-chewy. So
it would have taken some interesting technique to transform this little morsel
into displaying a dry popcorn-like texture.
The “main”
courses each had one feature ingredient, accompanied by other things, featuring an interesting mix of fresh ingredients and what I would best describe as molecular methods.
It’s hard to talk
about highlights when every dish is an amazing dish, but my pick out of the 5
“main” courses would have been the very pretty looking octopus bits accompanied
by delicate pieces of crunchy (but somehow colour-infused) green apple and dollops of avocado and rye mousse. Beautiful, fresh, simple and complementary
flavours. Sometimes the best things are
the simplest ones.
I also love
sweetbread, so that deserves a mention – perfectly cooked, with just enough caramelised searing for flavour and texture, yet remaining soft and tender when bitten into; and the accompanying "egg
yolk" (looking like an emulsified re-constituted yolk creation) seemed to defy the laws of physics: perfectly soft, runny and yet somehow
possessing a robust structural integrity that survived the plating and serving
process and all that time remaining in situ on the plate without sliding around. Just three items on the plate, but yet again, complementary in a manner as to enhance each others' flavours and textures.
Even the dessert, which looked straightforward on the menu, was meticulously made, the "walnut" being a light crunchy ball of walnut confection reminiscent of maltesers in construction, but slightly larger and without the chocolate covering. The chocolate was a beautiful mouthful of soft and moist chocolate cake-like bakeware (at least that's what I thought it was). And the portion was enough for you to enjoy dessert, but not so much as to make you feel stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey at the end of the meal.
You would
be wondering which of my dining companions is the über aficionado: when our
octopus dishes were delivered to our table, it looked so good that I simply
could not resist leaning over to smell the beautiful fresh aromas of the
various inhabitants of the plate, despite not knowing my dining companions that
well (even serious gourmet friends think I’m strange for doing that – yes Amanda,
I’m talking about you). Then as I looked
back up, I realised that Katie was doing the same thing, albeit more decorously off a fork. She had an eloquent response
for the sniffer-haters – a dining experience must be experienced with all 5
senses. True-dat!
This is someone who cooks 3 gourmet courses over the weekend to freeze them up for lunch and
dinner during the coming week, runs marathons in her spare time (and sometimes
in a catwoman costume …), so good at her hobby that she qualified for the Boston
and New York marathons; who was going to wake up at 5am on Sunday morning to do
a lazy 25km; and on top of that started up a multi-million dollar business when
she was younger, put her sister through uni, and is now an accomplished
lawyer. What a woman! C’est pas possible … но это правда!
Cameron, Katie
and I just kept talking throughout the evening; the flow was natural and happy
– there was never a quiet moment, and the allegedly inevitable awkward silence
expected for every conversation never eventuated. We spoke about life, family, love and the
future. All the while eating amazing
food and drinking one of my favourite Barossa shiraz from one of my favourite
winemakers – Ben Glaetzer’s 2010 Bishop Shiraz – we polished off two bottles without even
realising it until the dinner was over.
Everything about this place was stylish and sophisticated, and showed a lot of forethought. The bill even came in an envelope hand-sealed with red wax (sporting Urbane's "U" logo, no less!), accompanied by 3 copies of the menu we had enjoyed, so that everyone could take home a record of our experience.
A truly amazing
evening – beautiful food, enhanced to a new level by wonderful company and
conversation; one of the greater pleasures in life – greater because you can’t
buy it, nor can you prescribe how to achieve it: it just is or it isn’t.
Salmon, Juniper,
Onion Seed
Mussel on Rye
Toast, Saffron
Almond, Onions,
Tomato Seeds
Green Apple,
Avocado, Rye
Sweetbread,
Emmenthal, Egg Yolk
Chicken Liver,
Shallots, Yeast Cream
Coffee, Chocolate
Having been
carrying a Partagas Serie E No. 2 (kind of like a double-length Partagas Serie
D No. 4), I remembered the fellow smoking a cigar on the terrace, and decided
to follow suit – there’s nothing like lighting up a quality stogie to round off
a sublime meal.
