LVN Restaurant at Bird in Hand winery | SA Weekend restaurant review

The cooking at an ambitious new cellar door restaurant in the Hills is bristling with invention – but not everything hits the mark, as our reviewer discovered.

LVN restaurant is the new fine dining venture at Bird in Hand winery.

Even the best writers benefit from a good editor. The elements that are discarded can be just as important as those that are left in play.

The value of a second opinion, an outsider with a big red pen, came to mind during lunch at LVN, the new fine dining venture at Bird in Hand winery where chef Jacob Davey’s tasting menu bristles with invention, energy and mind-boggling complexity.

While the succession of almost 20 snacks and larger plates elicit multiple “oohs” and “aahs” of wonder – such as the fragile roasted zucchini crust on a “garden tart” of broad beans and parsley crowned with salmon roe.

But there are also a number of puzzled “eurgh” moments – such as mutton bird powder and blackened banana – along the way.

Wallaby, muntaris, smoked mutton bird at LVN restaurant, Bird in Hand winery: Picture: Supplied

Lunch at LVN is a wild but uneven ride. Picture: Supplied

Perhaps only a company with the financial wherewithal and bigger-picture vision of Bird in Hand would contemplate a restaurant concept this ambitious.

Certainly, it is pitched to a different audience than the people sipping rose and ordering platters beneath the plane trees on the glorious terrace in front of the cellar door at its Adelaide Hills estate.

LVN has taken over the space previously known as The Gallery, with minimal adjustments to the decor, though the tables have been spaced out (25-30 seats only) and contemporary artworks updated.

The big changes are in the kitchen, where Davey has overseen the installation of a new wood grill and other equipment. More importantly, the walls have come down, putting all the culinary hocus-pocus on show.

Comparisons are inevitable with Davey’s previous job, as head chef under Justin James at the all-conquering Restaurant Botanic. It’s not just the open kitchen.

He and the LVN team pick all manner of tiny leaves, shoots and blooms from a vegetable garden on site and the property next door, as well as foraging in the hills and coast. Then the hard work begins.

Noting every stage of fermenting, curing, dehydrating, blitzing et cetera in even one or two dishes would take much of this column. And, to be honest, much of this detail will be lost on the average diner.

Consider, for instance, a tiny snack that follows the sublime garden tart. A single zucchini flower petal is pressed with mussel meat, rolled, battered, fried, dusted with tomato and mussel powder, and anointed with a blob of sunrise lime kosho that has been fermented over four weeks.

LVN has taken over the space previously known as The Gallery, with minimal adjustments to the decor. Picture: Supplied

It looks like a potato chip. How’s it taste? Well … like nicely seasoned fried batter. Or, more worrying, an oyster that is grilled, chopped, mixed with warrigal sauce and blanketed in more than half a dozen small leaves, so that, if it hadn’t been dropped back into its shell, the hero ingredient would be a complete mystery.

As serves build in size, they become even more complicated. The effect, at times, is stunning. Fillets of mullet are a revelation after salting, a short pickle in dashi vinegar and the skin being scorched with a piece of hot charcoal.

Slices of briefly seared Flinders Island wallaby are draped over pickled muntries, the near-raw meat unbelievably delicate, a rare luxury.

The teeniest smear of a Vegemite-y yeast bearnaise is perhaps an enhancement but the shavings of dried mutton bird, a sort of avian bottarga, really doesn’t justify the palaver.

The garden tart at LVN elicits multiple “oohs” and “aahs” of wonder. Picture: Supplied

As for the banana that has fermented to a black goo for three months to become an accompaniment to otherwise superb roasted duck breast … that’s not something you can easily un-remember.

The most satisfying overall package, perhaps not surprisingly, is the most straightforward: a superb piece of aged nannygai, grilled skin-down and plopped on to a puddle of a sauce that starts life as a bisque but, after a few drops of galangal oil, wakes up in Southeast Asia.

Kudos also for the inspired she-oak-infused ice-cream (echoes of Botanic’s bunya dessert?) sitting on a blood plum sauce and sprinkled with a crunchy topping of crystallised barley koji. That’s my kind of nut sundae.

Lunch at LVN then, is a wild but uneven ride.

It feels as if a reservoir of ideas built up over many years has flooded into this first menu. And the wine list, limited to the estate’s label and particularly lacking a light-to-medium-bodied red, doesn’t measure up to dining at this ($195 a head) level.

All issues that can be resolved through time, reflection … and a red pen.