Every time I come here I'm struck by the sheer ambition of the place, the grandness, the money it must have cost. It's a place where you can't help but feel like you are entering, as in making an entry - through wooden walkways, large doors, generous entrances. On this occasion, we're veering off the usual path, though. It's dinner in the garden pavilions, since the restaurant proper was burned in the fire of October last year.
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That was tragedy indeed. It was a beautiful space and on our last visit the food hit the mark so well. The pavilions are pretty although really suited to summer dining. You enter an open storefront, where the charcuterie, smallgoods and bits made by Pialligo Estate are for sale; this is also where you pay the bill and there's a bar. It's essentially open and thus freezing. Tough place to work.
The pavilions are a couple of little square dining areas, plastic walls firmly anchored against the winter air, mood lights and a brazier adding dramatic shadows and warmth to the scene outside. I can imagine summer dining when the spaces are open to the garden would be charming. Inside each pod there are only perhaps half a dozen tables and the heat pump is working hard but struggling to counter blast each time the door is opened by wait staff tearing across the open ground from kitchen to pod and back again. They have to wear jackets to manage this and we're feeling for them.
The menu is simple, which I like, but it's also strangely difficult to navigate unless you're after a chunk of no-doubt-expertly done meat. The mains are headed "paddock and ocean", which about covers it, mainly paddock. You need to be up for this robust still of dining, which we really aren't. The "butcher's board" with sausage, lamb's fry, steak and bacon ($32) sounds like an awful lot of meat, and for us, despite our big admiration for Pialligo bacon, the only part of this that we would want to order is lamb's fry. Shame it's not offered as a dish itself. Or you can order your steaks by their weight and the method of ageing - 14 days wet-aged, dry-aged, or a combination of both.
If you're not ordering steak, the choices are shared dishes - slowcooked lamb shoulder, roast chicken with brown rice, and roast duck. After that, there's a fish of the day, beef cheeks, a pasta dish and a risotto. We find the starters easy to order and very easy to like, then we're lost on what to order. Next time, we would head for a shared dish, but tonight we try to order outside of big meat, so end up with wagyu bolognese ($26) and mushroom risotto ($30). Neither does the trick.
It's good to have fresh pasta in the bolognese, but the dish tastes under-salted and the bolognese sauce is thin, so there's no intensity and you feel that someone in the kitchen has failed to taste this. The risotto is also thin and loose, the mushroom flavour not infused, but there are little chunks of baby mushroom in halves or quarters. There's no stickiness, no intensity, no sharpness.
We have ordered sweet potato as a side dish and it is lovely - chunks of roast sweet potato with a a warm crunch and soft inside.
Working backwards to the best part of the meal, the Pavilions offers a charcuterie plate which is excellent. You can choose three, six or nine things - we choose three ($22).
The pork, cognac and prune terrine is chunky, mild and simple, on irresistible little oily toasts. The duck liver pate is likewise mild with a thick cheesy texture. Pickled eggplant is hot with chilli. There's other pickles - cucumber, red onion, and it adds up to a great way of eating, refined and raw at the same time, so I feel like I'm in a kind of patrician version of medieval England.
Crispy pork cheek ($24) is quite delicious and very porky. The pork cheek is pressed into a sausage, then crumbed and fried, served on a bed of something excellent, which I take as celeriac, full of mustard. It's delicious. There's also braised fennel and a light quince paste. Such good combinations and a a great start, good sizing, and the food tastes of itself.
The wine list is quite limited, especially by the glass. All of the reds by the glass tonight look to be Pialligo Estate wines, other than one from Long Rail Gully, another local. I like the emphasis on local wines, including by the bottle, but I don't like the insistence on Pialligo Estate, even if that is where we are eating, and I'm also feeling a bit underwhelmed by all the standard grapes on the list. If you've joined the stampede to the pungent, organic and wacky, you won't find what you're looking for here. Drinks, sadly, arrive after the food has landed. Oh well.
To the other end of the meal, the "smashed pavlova" ($15) is a bit disappointing. The meringue wafers are not sticky nor luxurious, it's like an Eton mess but the dish is not luscious, nor messy, but rather organised in its deconstruction.
The citrus tart ($15) is a very gentle citrus-laced loose custard filling a shortbread-style tart shell, with berries scattered. It's a pleasant dessert, and we really like the big rounds of candied lemon.
We arrived with great expectations tonight. There are downsides in the set-up, but given the restaurant is trying to get back on its feet and stay open where it can after the fire, these issues are easily tolerated. It is the meal that leaves us underwhelmed, especially given such as great start in the charcuterie and starters; perhaps we should have jumped straight in to a plate full of meat and perhaps we would have found the joy there.
Pialligo Garden Pavilions
Address: 18 Kallaroo Rd, Pialligo
Phone: 6247 6060
Website: thepialligoestate.com.au
Owner: John Russell
Chef: Darren Perryman
BYO: Yes
Hours: Wednesday to Friday lunch, noon-2.30pm; Wednesday to Friday dinner, 6-8.30pm; Saturday to Sunday lunch, 11.30am-3pm; Friday and Saturday dinner: 6-9pm. The Garden Pavilions are closing for renovations from September 14 until late October.
Wheelchair access: Yes
Noise: No problem.
Vegetarian: Limited - some pickles and sides, a souffle, mushroom risotto.
Score 13.5/20
