Happy birthday Mum | Wine & food… again…

Firstly, a very happy birthday to my wonderful Mum, 61 today. My sister and I treated her and indeed us all to dinner at The Deck in Southgate, an absolutely brilliant restaurant. In attendance were of-course my mother and father, my sister and her husband, and last of all myself, and we had booked a table actually out on the deck, no less. Unfortunately my brother and his wife are away for the summer for something which just couldn’t happen at any other time, but we know they were with us in spirit. I’ll be in Japan for my father’s birthday and my brother will stand in my stead so it sort-of balances out.

On to the food!

For entrée I had stuffed zuchini flowers, filled with feta and served with a tomato relish… for some reason this doesn’t appear on the menu listed online, so it might be a recent addition. Absolutely delicious.

For main I had Lamb saddle, eggplant jam, pencil leeks, beetroot & caper remoulade, red wine jus (coppied ad verbatim from the site) and it was prepared and cooked to perfection.
Two things to note: the lamb was cooked with the fat left on,
and most importantly was served rare, the only way to eat lamb.
Divine.

For desert I had the chocolate marquise which was simply rich and full of flavour, and the inevitable long-black coffee to accompany it, served towards the tail-end of the desert, another mark of an exceptional restaurant. There’s nothing worse than having coffee served before desert.

But all of that is almost beside the point… well, you know it isn’t, the meal was fantastic, but the centrepiece for my father and I was of-course the wine.

He and I shared a half-bottle of Sicilian 2002 Rallo Nero DAvola.
My god what a red!. I think I could just sit on the bank of the Yarra river in summer with a few bottles of that and drink it on its own. Full bodied and smooth, with the distinct southern Italian taste that subtly sets European wines apart from each-other. I love local wines, some of the wines from New South Wales and South Australia in particular are among the best in the world, but perhaps it’s just my father’s Italian blood in me that makes me love that Sicilian flavour and aroma so much. It perfectly complemented the evening and everything we ate; I certainly could have had a decent amount more of that, but we must always savour wine and not waste it on drunkenness, tempting as that may be.

I should also mention that dad and I got to Southgate a little early, plus we had to wait for my brother-in-law to arrive from work, so I got to do a little CD shopping; lo-and-behold, I found a nifty little store that was chockablock full of Schema Records CDs… well, four anyway, all of which I purchased for no more than $10 each! Bargain! I’m listening to the first one now and it’s absolutely brilliant; Schema are definitely my new favourite label after what has become disappointing consistency from dZihan & Kamien’s Couch Records.

Oh how lucky I am to be listening to this fabulous music and drinking all of this great wine!