Botanic Adelaide

Over in Adelaide for the Adelaide Festival (see this blog here) on our first full day, Sunday the 1st of March, we dined at Botanic. A wonderful setting in the botanic gardens. We were not deterred by the day long rain which Adelaide was enjoying after previously enduring heat in the forties.

A lovely octagonal room awaited us in a lovely similarly shaped building – presumably a garden pavilion in a previous life. We had a window table.

Just the right number of people enjoying a Sunday lunch. It’s a set menu of fifteen courses.

Seven bite-sized dishes to start. desert lime, school shrimp, seaweed and Kristal caviar

They came quickly. roo tail abelskiver with raclette and onion gel

And were very inventively presented. mille feuille of emu and its liver, with rosella

Amazing flavours, and terrific tableware. croc tongue, saltbush and smoked eel

Lots of different temperatures, this was icy. Barnda oyster, lemon aspen, Kaviari Oscietra Gros Grain caviar

This was delicious. crocodile tongue barbequed cos lettuce

Lots of different textures here. aged caviar oyster lemon aspen

With the sauce served at table by one of the many professional waiting staff.

Here we are midway through – very happy.

This scented emu bush scroll with fermented yeast butter foreshadowed the main courses. I didn’t want to eat too much of it but it was the lightest texture!

Then four main courses, at least that’s what I took these later ones to be. Donnybrook marron, wild boar lardo, tree ants and bush tomato.

This beautifully presented dish is Murray cod and silky pear.

Fran and I are bearing up well. We were drinking Gewurztraminer, having declined the award winning matching wines.

There was a bit of a wait before the next courses. Time to take in the ambience. I loved the ceiling feature.

And the table decoration which included a recipe book which two other diners were reading and told me it contained maps of where the restaurant sourced the ingredients for these wonderful dishes.

This lamp and a log covered with kangaroo skin was beside our table. Wonderful lamp design.

More food. emu flat fillet, desert quandong and warrigal leaf.

Portions were perfect after all of the little dishes we had eaten. We had a visit from the chef before one of the dishes – perhaps this one. juniper smoked kangaroo, horseradish, macadamia mole

Skewers that I thought might be a bit chewy – were most decidedly not! Paroo kangaroo, macadamia nut and golden beet

Yes – we still had room for two desserts! lily pilly, currants and raspberry

All of it was wonderful but this was amazing. sugarbag honey, banana and wattleseed

Our three petit fours were bite size which was just as well. croc caramel choc (at the front), rosella and strawberry gum marshmallow (the pink flowers at the back) and mandarin and myrtle

Accompanied by a herbal teas served in this lovely set.

A meal for the ages! After four or so hours we were replete and ready for our wet return through the gardens.