Sel de la Terre
74 Toorak Road, South Yarra VIC
03 9866 2744
www.seldelaterre.com.au

 

I remember my first visit to the MCG for a Grand Final. It was 1978. I had just arrived in Melbourne to doing the morning shift on “foive ta noine, foine and moild” 3XY. I should remember it. I got thrown out.

Actually hot shot journalists, John Jost and Andrew (son of Manning) Clark, got thrown out with me. We got there so late it was standing room only up there in nose bleed country.

We were conducting a “social experiment” which consisted of fluttering one dollar notes (that’s how long ago it was) down from the stands into the milling crowd below. In retrospect (and with age) it was a stupid, dangerous, not to mention an expensive, thing to do. It could have started a stampede and somebody could have got hurt.

What has this got to do with a restaurant review?  Well, at the time Jost urged me to experience my first Grand Final, we were having a plate of spaghetti bolognaise at a South Yarra restaurant called Barolo’s. A narrow bistro with wooden banquettes and a noisy, steaming kitchen Italiano.

It finally closed decades later and has been replaced by a French restaurant called Sel de la Terre – salt of the earth. If it is the “salt of the earth” it is certainly a refined salt. Very French. Very classy. That’s just the ambience and the kitchen doesn’t let them down.

They call the fare “modern French”  which doesn’t mean it can’t be rich and too much can be too heavy for some people.

It started on a BIG promise. They boasted “Woodbridge Organic Smoked Trout”. Not just that. They also promised it was smoked with

“organic Tasmanian fruitwoods”.  The owner told me that after eating it I would turn my nose up at even the best smoked salmon. And he was right.

I swear I could taste charcoal, Smokey, but subtle, fruit wood flavours. It was served with a mouth watering cucumber and dill relish and Yarra Valley salmon caviar. A ten out of ten entrée.

Mrs.Nosebag had a twice-cooked goat’s cheese soufflé with  black truffle dressing. She usually not big on goat’s cheese. Loved this offering – but knowing how much food was still in the pipeline I thought it was a bit adventurous.

For a main she had the  wild barramundi fillet with a fine herb salad. The menu said the dish was served with a “lemon and prawn ectrasee”. That had me a bit worried – especially when I looked it up in the dictionary and the closest I could get to the word was ecraseur. That’s a surgical wire loop that cuts as it tightens. Used outside the body I guess you’d call it a garrotte.

In French foodie terms, according to Larousse Gastronomique,  it means to crush aromatic seeds. It’s also how to you crispy, baked bread into breadcrumbs.

I was tossed up between a traditional coq au vin and the braised duckling.  Went for the duck but it was hardly a toss-up the braised duck was really a canard au vin anyway.

That doesn’t say it was ordinary. Far from it. It was a tureen of slowly cooked duck with green olives, chilli, smoked pork sausage and potatoes.

The duck fell of the bones the way a good slowly-cooked lamb shank should be. The sauce was one of those “ grab a piece of bread to use as a blotter” type sauces.

My only, slight, criticism was that it didn’t need the sausage.

Their side dish of slim, tiny, baby carrots with the green tops still on, was served with tarragon and black olives. Slightly sweet and buttery and beautiful both to the eye and the tastebuds.

While we took a rest they served a cute mini-version of one of the desserts: a bonsai-sized passionfruit soufflé served in a scooped out passionfruit shell. Clever.

We passed on the exotic desserts and in-house ice cream because, recently, Mrs. Nosebag and I have had a passion for any cheese with a blue vein in it. Especially ones that look like a penicillin factory.

At Sel de la Terre they had a Societe Roquefort from the oldest producers in France. Started in 1863.

It was a blue (obviously) made from raw, sheep’s milk that was still creamy and had a sharp salty tang to it. For a while red tape stopped unpasteurised cheese from entering Australia from Europe but sanity has finally prevailed.

There was a good selection of muscats and cognacs and ports and – if you wanted to splurge you could have a 375 ml bottle of the king of dessert wines, Chateau d’Yquem, for $426.  Why not 420 or 425? I don’t know. I guess that’s the French for you.

Anyway it was a long way from being evicted from the MCG at a Grand Final.

June 30, 2006