SA Weekend restaurant review: Lake Breeze at Langhorne Creek

It’s not the best-known cellar door or winery in SA – but there’s one thing on the menu that makes the drive worthwhile.

Lake Breeze at Langhorne Creek. Picture: John Krager

Winery folk like to make a big deal about topographic features. Vineyards are established on the steepest slopes facing in a particular direction. Cellar doors are built so they look over all before them. Hills, mountains and valleys feature in the names of labels and regions. Height above sea level is a selling point.

A visit to Langhorne Creek, then, requires an altitude adjustment. Most of its roads are straight, the landscape has barely a ripple. And the vineyard of one of its biggest names, Lake Breeze, could double as a bowling green. Still, viewed through the window of the winery’s restaurant, framed by the boughs of majestic gums, this vista has a grandeur all its own. And, as aficionados will attest, fruit grown in this area can produce wine of the highest quality.

The Lake Breeze story goes back more than 150 years, when the Follett family began farming this patch, but it was several generations and almost 100 years before wines were bottled under their own label.

The name refers to the cooling wind that blows off the waters of Lake Alexandrina. Closer still is the Bremer River whose waters regularly breach the banks and inundate the surrounding plain as part of the natural cycle.

Don’t miss pictures of Lake Breeze’s flooded vineyards in the tasting room, part of a cellar door that has expanded up and across from the original limestone hay shed to encompass a series of dining rooms and larger spaces.

Karaage chicken and yuzu kosho mayonnaise

Barramundi and shellfish bisque.

The additions blend in well, with more stone incorporated into fireplace surrounds and feature walls, and glass doors opening out to a paved patio that would be stunning in summer.

Clearly, the hospitality side of the business is growing and more resources are being devoted to it, particularly through the appointment of chef Ben McRae early this year to oversee the kitchen. While he was raised in SA, McRae has spent the past decade or so working everywhere from private yachts on the Mediterranean, to London, to hotels through Indonesia. His menu is something of a biography, with shellfish bisque and eggplant parmigiana rubbing shoulders with yuzu kosho mayo and a lychee salad (though not on the same plate thankfully).

McRae’s time living in Tokyo with his Japanese wife has informed starters such as a fabulous take on karaage chicken in which the juiciness of the thigh chunks can be traced back to a marinade including shio koji (fermented rice), grated apple and soy.

Panko-crumbed fillets of Port Lincoln sardines are served with a pickled cucumber salad and a jug of soy, mirin and shiitake dressing. It’s a better (but no doubt less popular) option than a salt-and-pepper squid in which the coating is bland and the seafood from interstate doesn’t measure up to the local calamari.

Lamb and meechi stout pie

On that note, let’s get a few grievances with the mains out of the way. Fillets of NT barramundi are fractionally overcooked and swamped by a cream-heavy bisque sauce that doesn’t need the white beans. And the fat in a slab of coconut and lemongrass-braised pork belly either needs a harder trim or to be further rendered, though the flavour of the sauce and the lychee/herb/chilli jam salad scattered across the top hits all the right notes.

The lamb pie, on the other hand, is a work of kitchen craft worthy of the highest accolades. McRae makes both the short crust (for bottom and sides) and puff pastries (top) himself and crimps them together into a flawless package filled with fall-apart chunks of lamb shoulder braised in stout from local brewer Meechi.

Desserts follow the same pattern. A kalamansi (Asian citrus) pudding is forgettable below its surface saucing, whereas a dense piece of spice-fragrant olive oil cake is both intriguing and delicious.

Langhorne Creek, unfortunately, lacks the profile of larger regions, meaning wineries have to fight hard for attention. Lake Breeze is working extra hard but, at this point, still has a few ups and downs to smooth over.