Crocodile tail, brain butter, blood sausage: Brisbane’s bizarre 15-course dinner

Queensland’s flora and fauna is put to good use in the state’s most out-there dinner.

Alison Walsh

@AlisonAWalsh

3 min read

July 1, 2021 - 2:00PM

QWeekend

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The menu reads like a naturalist’s checklist of Queensland’s must-see flora and fauna. Northern mangrove crab? Yes. Crocodile? Indeed. Emu? It’s there too. There are also foraged mushrooms, heritage pumpkin and at times you will also find bull kelp, bunya nuts, kangaroo tail, native thyme and wild venison.

This deep dive into lesser-used local produce, combined with Nordic cooking techniques such as fermentation, pickling and smoking, is on display at New Farm’s Elska, which takes its name from the Scandinavian word for love. The name seems appropriate as this is a labour-intensive passion project by Nathan and Freja Dunnell, with only 12 diners seated in the restaurant at a time. The couple, Freja has Danish heritage and Nathan has experience at fine diners such as Stokehouse Q, moved the business from Wilston earlier this year, after originally running popular cafe Freja’s in the inner-northern suburb before changing it in to a 12-seat restaurant early last year. They felt the space wasn’t right for fine dining and made the move to the Merthyr Rd site in February.

Nordic theme: Elska restaurant, New Farm. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

On a cold winter’s night we enter the made-over restaurant at 6pm for the first sitting, where white walls are adorned with hanging bouquets of herbs and foliage, antlers and what appears to be elk skins. Round, blonde wood tables are left uncovered but accessorised with a vase, a candle and more antlers to build the Scandi aesthetic. Dinner is a 15-course set degustation ($135 per person) and there’s wine matching for $95 per person, as well as a global wine list that focuses on boutique wineries. Attractive Plumm glassware enhances the experience.

The dinner is served across a two-hour timeslot (to leave time to prep for a second sitting at 8.30pm) and unfolds at rapid speed with the waiter and the sommelier delivering each dish to diners pretty much at the same time. First up there’s house-made blood sausage on a savoury wafer, a dumpling-like cylinder of smoked potato and northern mangrove crab wrapped in pickled potato and clinging to the top of an enormous for-presentation-purposes-only crab claw, and a pumpkin and rye cracker topped with crème fraiche and a roast pumpkin.

The waiter rattles off the many components of each dish and it’s very hard to keep track. It seems best to just surrender to the experience. Next, choko comes off the back fence and into fine dining territory in the form of crunchy discs mounded over marron with a small Danish-style pastry on the side topped with piped marron brain butter. Crocodile tail arrives in a dumpling with mandarin ponzu.

Delicious: Marburg emu tartare at Elska in New Farm. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Some of the dishes are quirky and inventive rather than a taste sensation but particularly appealing was the emu tartare, the meat bound with an emulsion of fermented sauce made from ground crickets and black garlic, seasoned with horseradish, fermented shiso leaf and shallots and topped with puffed freekah, amaranth, emu egg mayonnaise and cured emu egg yolk. Foraged mushrooms, Watson’s leaping bonito, minced chicken on a skewer and Robbins Island wagyu beef round out the savoury courses.

Fish dish: Watson’s leaping bonito with seasonal brassica. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

Desserts are a standout, with the Australian citrus koldskal a concoction of buttermilk mousse, Danish almond biscuit, preserved cumquat curd, fresh fingerlime and desert lime, mandarin granita and bergamot ice-cream. The “Elska crunchy” is a delicious confection of burnt honey mousse, using honey from the Boondall wetlands, fermented honey syrup, a chocolate honey crisp and a bitter chocolate sorbet. Wait there’s more: a slim slice of rhubarb tart then various petit fours including tiny apple donuts round out the meal.

There’s so much going on, there’s so much to savour, that a two-hour timeslot feels like a bit of a rush, although it’s all well-managed.

This is one for the deep-pocketed adventurous eater looking to step beyond the standard restaurant experience.