Review: McLaren Vale Hotel’s new chef Paul Wilson shakes up menu

The McLaren Vale Hotel has had a major upgrade, including the arrival of a rock star chef with top pedigree. As our food reviewer finds, he’s putting a delicious spin on pub grub.

Lamb sausage roll at the McLaren Vale Hotel, McLaren Vale

Paul Wilson is a rock star in the world of restaurants. Even the late, great Anthony Bourdain said as much.

Not that Wilson has real celebrity recognition nor a Taylor Swift following.

The affable Englishman is more like a Dave Grohl or Leonard Cohen – widely liked and admired, especially in Melbourne, where he has spent most of the past 30 years.

It’s surprising, then, that the news he is now living and working in South Australia has been kept remarkably low key.

Wilson moved quietly with his wife (who is originally from here) into a house at Aldinga last year and has taken over the kitchen of the revamped McLaren Vale Hotel with a minimum of fuss.

The gig is part of a wider relationship with owner Martin Palmer and his Palmer Hospitality Group that, in time, will see Wilson put his stamp on the cooking in a range of venues.

Mulloway, tomatoes and sea vegetables at the McLaren Vale Hotel.

Caramelised onion tart.

Judging by the generous-hearted, pitch-perfect, midwinter lunch we had a few Sundays back, the move will be a winner for both the business and the wider region which now has a pub to complement all the cellar doors.

It should also provide a long-term benefit to the other chefs involved who are hopefully soaking up all the unfashionable technique evident in the velouté, anglaise and other elements that underpin the meal.

Wilson learnt all this the hard way, as an apprentice in England with the legendary Roux brothers, before moving to spiffy hotels such as the Dorchester and the Ritz.

A salad of roasted mushrooms and egg yolk.

By the age of 27, he was head chef at London’s 300-seat Quaglino’s, before being brought over to Melbourne in 1999 to work on a similarly ambitious project.

While that ultimately fell over, Wilson stayed on, opening the celebrated Botanical in South Yarra and then shifting to a wider consulting role for a leading pub group.

All that experience, as well as some trial and error with the locals, has come together in twin menus for the bar and more significantly Bellevue Dining, a carpeted room and expansive deck that takes full advantage of the surrounding grounds of Hardy’s Tintara estate and its Tolkienesque trees.

The bar area at the McLaren Vale Hotel.

This is food tailor-made to the season, with updated takes on Brit-pub classics (scotch egg anyone?) and plates that will wrap you up like a heavy overcoat. Just make sure you start hungry.

Even the snacks are substantial, whether it is a pair of Welsh rarebit and cauliflower croquettes or sausage rolls with lamb/yoghurt filling and punchy date and preserved lemon ketchup that is worth bottling.

A whole onion is marinated in red wine and then cooked long and slow, before being plopped into a pastry shell, up-ended and baked like a tarte tatin.

It comes out of the oven the colour of blackberry jam, with each layer yielding easily to the knife and all the winey juices reduced to a sticky caramel. A wedge of (Woodside) goat cheese adds the perfect contrast.

Corned beef and beef cheeks, the old and new of pub dining, are combined to show off the best of both, with meat the dark magenta of a nasty bruise falling apart in gelatinous lobes.

To the side are root vegetables (turnip, swede, carrot) as they should be – not in an anonymous puree but simply braised in the poaching stock and presented as is, with all their bitter-edged goodness on show.

Wilson, a keen angler, is an advocate for wild (rather than farmed) fish and uses two varieties caught in the Coorong.

Butterflied mullet fillets are coated in a crumb seasoned with dried seaweed for an upmarket fish and chips, while mulloway and plump winter mussels are the stars of an Italian-style seafood stew.

The mythical second stomach is definitely required for dessert, particularly a big wedge of bread and butter pudding in a pool of anglaise that contains enough egg yolks, cream and butter to get even the most understanding heart surgeon in a flap.

Having this served hot (not cold) is an option that disappointingly wasn’t explained when we ordered.

And therein lies the one flaw at this stage of the MVH’s development.

Staff are young and cheery but forgotten requests (table water, a fork) and L-plate food knowledge takes off some of the shine.

Fix that and it will be among the top few pub options in SA.