English vs Australian cuisine
a) is important as English cuisine doesn't sit so well with me (English friends forgive me please), despite being partial to the desserts here and Sunday roasts. According to wikipedia, English cuisine involves bread, cheese, fish (cod and haddock everywhere), shellfish, pies and pastries, sausages, sandwiches, and stuff that is salted, smoked, pickled and preserved.
I've never been sure what exactly is defined as Australian cuisine (even wikipedia is far less definitive in this area) but in my experience it definitely doesn't involve having cod / haddock / salted & smoked stuff, pies etc. on menus all the time. Its always felt to a bit "fusion" with a lot of Asian flavours and I recall that pork belly seemed to be particularly in vogue by the time I left. Actually now I think about it I have a bit to say on food at home, will leave that for another post. By the way, I'm so not a food connoisseur, I'm just someone that likes to cook and eat!
Anyway back to the food - I was particularly excited about Modern Pantry since the sample menu looked like it had things I love to see and eat on a menu. In fact, it gets printed daily so I assume it must change subtly (or more obviously) every day. The day we went happened to be my birthday and I certainly wasn't disappointed!
Starters
I ate THE best tasting corn fritters I've ever eaten in my life. According to the menu it did had dates and feta as well as corn and was accompanied by rose and molasses yoghurt.
At my request, Mr T tried the spring rolls filled with crab and lemongrass which came with a coconut and green chilli dipping sauce. Alas, the spring rolls tasted like western made crab that had been put in a spring roll rather than an Asian spring roll - not sure whether that was the intention. Didn't rock my world but tasty nonetheless.
Mains
We had fairly contrasting mains afterwards, with a roasted haddock on congee and sambal (I'm not sure why on earth I've never thought to do this) and a tamarind marinated onglet steak. I think this was my least favourite part of the meal, though I was excited that the side of cassava chips came with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce! Just like wedges... but not.
Something sweet
The dessert menu looked awesome and I was super excited by the variety in frozen flavours. But me being me, I couldn't settle for a scoop of Modern Pantry style frozen since it seems such poor value when I can try and replicate this next time I do an experiment (thats the Asian in me talking).
So I went the whole dessert hog and came out with a chocolate pudding of sorts with a white miso caramel and a matcha syrup.
And a pecan meringue which was surprisingly creamy and chewy rather than meringue like. I was particularly happy that it came with rhubarb! A favourite of mine but perhaps a little old fashioned.
I think I mentioned I'm partial to the puddings in this country; one of the things I love about eating desserts is adding new stuff to the ideas bank and trying to use them my way. In this case, the new kids on the block courtesy of Modern Pantry:
- New ice cream flavours
- Miso in my caramel
- Rose and molasses yoghurt (and an enhanced corn fritter)
Awesome!
PS: Mr T and I liked this Modern Pantry so much we did go back for breakfast a couple of days later... more on that another day.
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