Cutler & Co, Men’s final

After the excitement of the ladies final, my friends Simone, Greg and I got up late (well I did anyway) and made our way down (or is it up?) to North Melbourne and lunch at Cutler and Co.
Cutler and Co is what Melbourne does well, trendy with that grungy look but still managing to be clean. Their Sunday lunch menu is pretty simple – no choice on the starters but a choice of three mains plus one special and three desserts.

The starters were:
Round 1: Oysters; Seaweed crackers with Smoked aubergine and Manzanilla olives

Manzanilla Olives, Smoked Aubergine Puree and Oysters

Round 2: Heirloom Carrots with mint and pomegranate, kingfish sashimi with furikake and ginger; Halloumi with heirloom tomatoes and sumac and beetroot with ras-el-hanout, goat’s cheese and lardons.

Heirloom carrot salad, Kingfish sashimi

Halloumi and Beet root salad

The smoked aubergine was simple and tasty, with a big, smoky flavour. They could honestly have been served with any crispy cracker, poppadom or something else, but this worked well. The kingfish was fresh, with a really delicious dressing as you’d expect with sashimi.  (Furikake, should you wish to know, is described by Wikipedia as “a dry Japanese condiment meant to be sprinkled on top of rice. It typically consists of a mixture of dried and ground fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate. Other flavourful ingredients such as katsuobushi (sometimes indicated on the package as bonito), or okaka (bonito flakes moistened with soy sauce and dried again), freeze-dried salmon particles, shiso, egg, powdered miso, vegetables, including kimchi, etc., are often added to the mix.”
The mains that we had were the roasted lamb shoulder and Snapper, smoked mussels, fennel and caperberries.  The lamb was what it was – well cooked and soft but a little plain. The snapper on the other hand was great. The fish was perfectly cooked and delicious, with lots of fun and different flavours. The caperberries in particular worked well (as usual) with the fish.

Snapper

The star of the desserts was the star anise pineapple, yoghurt sorbet and spiced granita. The pineapple was sweet and fresh, the yoghurt sorbet creamy yet light and this was all nicely finished by the peppery, icy ginger granita.  Unfortunately, I was too busy eating to take a picture of that dessert, so I took this of Simone’s.

Berries, poached merengue and watermelon granita

We had two bottles of wine, the Mount Mary Cabernet and the Meerea Park Terracotta Semillon – the Mount Mary wines are quite well known, with the Quintet Cabernet blend earning Langton’s highest rating. This Cabernet is from a lower yield year, in which the no quintet was made and so is available at a much more reasonable price. The Semillon is made by a boutique producer in the Hunter Valley and was also quite a gem and a good match to the fish and earlier courses that we had.

Federation Square
After lunch, I passed through the Transport bar at Federation square, on the way to the tennis. I met Sarah the head of pastry when I worked at Rocket caterers. Sarah moved to Melbourne about 5 years ago and is now executive pastry chef, running the pastry section at “The Big Group”, one of Melbourne’s top catering companies.

Sarah and her husband Joel

Tennis
Well the men’s final started off looking like it would be a really great match but it was a step too far for Andy Murray, who went into meltdown from the third set… (sadly not bullet-proof, nothing to lose…)

Murray and Djokovic after the toss

The crowd was rowdy and boisterous and probably quite a bit drunk. Still, the tennis long-weekend managed to be pretty enjoyable all round, despite the never ending playing of Titanium (by David Guetta, featuring Australia’s very own Sia).