CIRCA
2 Acland St. St.Kilda
Melbourne VIC
Ph: 03 9536 1122
www.circa.com.au

 

This place is so good you tend to use it, lazily, as a yardstick. Things are ‘Circa-like’ or ‘reminds me of Circa’. Or ‘tries to be like Circa’. It is an understandable example to hold up. Because it is so good and so consistent.

They were brave people who started it. The address is ‘Ackland Street’  but it is really part of that old blood house on Fitzroy Street called The Prince of Wales.

And yet, tucked in the tattered back pocket, it is a restaurant of world class. The look, the food, the service – and one of the most comprehensive wine lists in the country – make Circa the benchmark for any Australian restaurateur striving for culinary greatness.

I have been there a number of times and, in fact, thought I had reviewed it  before. Each time you come away raving about the textures and the tastes and the combinations of dishes from a menu that is calculatingly not huge  and is up in the Sydney range when it comes to prices.

They have cracked the $25 barrier for entrees. For example I had a bowl of ‘golden chicken broth with sesame dumpling, white funghi and tempura pigeon breast.’ It was superb. But at $25 for a soup entrée it needed to be.

Mrs Nosebag had a winter vegetable salad with ‘shanklish and mint, roasted chestnut and honey dressing’. To be honest, I had never heard of shanklish. It turned out to be a sort of crunchy, Middle Eastern yogurt crumbs.

 Her $19 entrée was so good that I ordered it as a main course. They could even make a piece of cucumber the size of your little fingernail a taste sensation.

(We should have known the food would be good because the bread rolls were perfect and we were lured in by an eggcup sized taste of hot parsnip soup with splinters of crispy bacon).

There were only six mains on offer (plus a lamb special). But they were so diverse it didn’t matter. You knew the chef would be focussing on a few dishes only.

There was an upmarket steak and kidney pie with a blonde beer sauce. A couple of  fish dishes – pan fried King George whiting and steamed wild barramundi – and a rabbit saddle with broad bean and basil puree and a sherry sauce which sounded heavy in taste and price( $40).

Mrs. Nosebag had a ‘spelt grain and lentil risotto with wild mushrooms’ and a surprisingly generous serve of truffles from Western Australia.

They had three side dishes and we ordered two of them at $9 each. Braised Dutch cream potatoes with herbs and chorizo.  These days the chorizo sausage is being thrown into everything. This time it really works. And the baby iceberg lettuce with parmesan cream also featured some candied walnuts.  And that worked a treat.

In recent times Circa has had some major departures of senior staff and some kitchen changes but you would never know it. You come away from there just knowing that some real alchemy has gone on amidst the pots and pans.

Right now in the Hungry Hinch book it stands right up there as the place for others to beat.

December 8, 2006