Pettavel Restaurant

65 Pettavel Road, Waurn Ponds, VICTORIA
Phone 03 5266 1120

To kick of Honeymoon Number 2 (the first being spent with some overseas relatives in Tassie – yeah, I know, my posts are all out of order here), we decided to stop by Pettavel Winery, which just so happened to be on our way to Otways, our destination for a week of R&R post-wedding.

Sitting on the far side of Geelong, Pettavel sits high on a hilltop overlooking a vale of grape vines and, the Princes Highway. The building itself is a little imposing when you drive up to it, and I’m not quite sure I felt entirely comfortable in the modern, grape-y interior. But thankfully the food (and the service) more than made up for that. There is some interesting fare to be had, which is well experienced with the five course degustation at $75 per head (lunch)

As we were driving, we only had the one glass of plonk, in this case a 2006 Platina Chardonnay.  It had a nice tease of toasted oak, yet was citrussy and somewhat floral.

After an amuse-bouche of mushroom and truffle soup, we kicked off with the polenta with quails egg, nasturtium and hazelnut.  The soft polenta square was generously infused with butter, and was a good compliment to the crunch of the  hazelnuts and tuille type shards.  The peppery wild rocket and bitter nasturtium nicely cut through the richness.

I very much enjoyed most of the seared scallop with ‘chorizo’ and paprika.  The scallop sat on split batons of white and green asparagus (surprisingly, the scallop was in fact cold, which I must admit I wasn’t so keen on), and that sat on a smear of paprika infused pureed roasted capcisum.  The ’chorizo’ was a deep fried crumbed ball of minced chorizo – tasty!

The next dish was a caramalised piece of pork belly with apple and pickled onion. What I loved about the dish was that it wasn’t overtly sweet – the pickled onion, the unripe globes of fruit (was it a grape?) and the smear of apple puree.  The scatter of spiced crumbs (did I detect a hint of ginger)  was perhaps the element that drew it all together for me.

For our main, Dan chose the perfectly crisp kingfish on a puree of avocado, with a foamy cloud hiding teeny pieces of tempura’d spanner crab.  Dan said it offered more a textural than taste sensation, as no flavour really dominated.  He adored the fish, but the nebulous crab cloud was kind of, er, confusing.

I chose the Lara rabbit, which was a spectacular choice.  The boned and rolled bunny had a centre of almost white loin meat, and it sat in a puddle pea puree with a salad of pea shoots, croutons and parmesan.  The rabbit was just so moist and juicy.

Between mains and dessert we decided to wander down to the restaurant gardens, where we spied one of the Chef’s picking some produce for the kitchen.  I was quite impressed, we found all manner of herbage, leeks, cavolo nero, edible flowers and salad leaves.  I can’t wait to have a garden so I can plant such delectable things.

For dessert, Dan went the Citrus with olive oil, vanilla and ice cream.  This dish was the essence of Summer – a variety of citrussy jellies and leathers, juicy segments of sweet orange, a crumble of vanilla shortbread, and a lip smackingly tart citrus gelato.  I might have been jealous, but…

…I think my dessert rocked too.  This is the apple pithiver with caramel and date – perfectly puffed pastry in the shape of a French coal miners hat (thanks Jack for that interesting tidbit of info!) encasing tart cooked Granny Smiths.  On the side, lines of caramel and date puree sat beneath matchsticks of the same grannies, and a plate lickingly good quenelle of caramel and vanilla bean ice cream.

Petits Fours were a great way to end the meal.  Sherbetty squares of rosewater turkish delight, almond friands and a fruit and nut panforte. The coffee was pretty good too!