Muse at Mitchelton Winery serves great value regional food
MUSE restaurant at Mitchelton has regional winery dining down to a fine art — with one side dish in particular that’ll make the roadtrip north worthwhile, writes Dan Stock.
delicious.100
Don't miss out on the headlines from delicious.100. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THE GOULBURN River snakes around the back of the property, its banks lined with silvery gums stretching their limbs haphazardly.
The air is cool, the water still, the silence broken by the distant call of a kookaburra that adds, as if on cue, surround sound to a scene straight from an Arthur Boyd canvas.
WHY LAURA IS THE FINAL PIECE OF PT LEO ESTATE PUZZLE
17 REASONS WHY PUMPKIN IS YOUR WINTER BESTIE
PRIZED TUNA SUSHI EVERYONE SHOULD TRY
The river, however majestic, is not the most famous Australian of these parts — that honour goes to Black Caviar — nor is it the first thing you’ll notice upon arrival at Mitchelton Winery.
For that is the tower, designed by Arthur’s cousin Robin Boyd, which remains as quirkily arresting a sight as central Victoria has to offer, standing sentry among 115ha of vines that are shedding their last deep burgundy and chardonnay-golden leaves for winter.
The views from the observation deck 55 meters up are astonishing.
From its heyday in the early ‘90s when no self-respecting South Yarra socialite would drink anything other ice-cold Preece chardonnay, the Nagambie winery first planted in the late 60s by winemaker Colin Preece and entrepreneur Rob Shelmerdine withered under corporate ownership and faded from fashion.
Enter Andrew Ryan and dad Gerry, he of Jayco Caravans and the Melbourne Pub Group, who have since 2011 embarked on an ambitious rebirth of the property which culminated in a super-sexy 60-odd-room hotel opening in December.
Alongside the hotel, design firm Hecker-Guthrie also spruced up the existing Robin Boyd structures including the cellar door and the restaurant, Muse, where breakfast through dinner is served daily under the soaring A-point ceiling in their signature clean-lined Scandi-chic surrounds, or out on the terrace under the spring/summer vines.
Today it’s lunch by the large open fireplace that’s keeping us warm. Tables are well spaced throughout the large room so it’s as accommodating to the couple up from town as a central gathering of the far-flung clan.
Exec chef Daniel Hawkins — who will also be in charge of Loudon, the new restaurant that’ll replace Circa at The Prince in St Kilda come spring — is here now cooking up a Goulburn Valley storm.
He’s walking the local-supplier-farm-to-fork talk, clocking up the country K’s picking up smoked brisket from Taurus Meats in Seymour, and trout from Alexandra, and popping up to Cohuna on the border to chat with John McEwan at Bald Rock Pork about small-scale farming.
That pork is treated with respect, served as a fat cutlet in a fennel seed-spiked crumb. The meat served with a hint of pink has depth of flavour, sweet and meaty. Vibrant radicchio adds a bitter counter, a brilliant apple mustard seasons with fruity-sweet heat. It’s an excellent plate ($32).
Hearty and rustic yet showing Dan’s kitchen smarts honed at Melbourne’s higher end — Stokehouse, Circa, Longrain — a roasted chicken is served in an enamel bowl with big hunks of smoky bacon, crunchy crostini and a few pine mushrooms. The confidently cooked chicken is drizzled with a rich jus gras and topped with a herb salad including fresh tarragon and nettle. On one hand it’s roast chook. On the other, it’s so much more. Inspired and completely satisfying ($30 half, $58 whole).
Head-on, deboned Marianvale Blue Murray cod comes pan-roasted with butter-browned skin and flaky flesh, a decadent beurre blanc sauce adding richness to the clean-tasting creaminess of the fish ($28), while to start, trout with just a subtle waft of smokiness comes prettily topped with shaved walnut and pickled rhubarb batons. It’s the most delicate of the plates we tried ($12); the brisket, conversely, the most rustic.
Fine slivers of marbled beef tender and smoky and rich are piled among mushrooms in fresh and terrific puree form, with charred crostini on which to place the lot. It’s hearty and heartening ($12), though there’s an admirable love of fresh greenery throughout, with herb-and-leaf salads dressing most other plates.
And given we’re eating our greens it means chips aren’t cheating and these are so good you need no other reason to get in the car. A big bowl of skin-on beauties are fat and crunchy and fluffy, seasoned with salt, fresh rosemary and roasted garlic. With a good aioli for dunking and you have $6 I can’t think of a better way to spend.
The wine list sticks to the eminently drinkable, value-forward estate wines for around $10-11 a glass, while the small bottle list ventures just a little further across Victoria, focusing on interesting varietals and winemakers (Kathleen Quealy’s amphora fruiliano; a Beechworth petit mensang blend), with top drinking at the $50 bottle mark.
Service is switched on, engaging, and surprisingly sweats the small stuff (prices with specials, tables wiped, share plates delivered intuitively) and, along with a homely bread and butter pudding studded with spiced quince ($12) and good coffee, completes a great meal.
That it simultaneously celebrates small producers and local farmers and is fantastic value to boot makes Muse a must.
Score: 15/20
Muse at Mitchelton
470 Mitchellstown Rd, Nagambie
Ph: 5736 2222
mitchelton.com.au
Open: Breakfast, lunch, dinner daily
Go-to dish: Bald Rock pork cutlet
Why wagyu cannoli should be on your must-eat hit list
Marameo serves up kitchen hits like a knockout plate of reginette and the terrifically twisted wagyu cannoli. But it’s not just the food luring in the office lads and ladies to this reborn CBD stalwart.
The stupidly delicious dish you need to order at Maha Bar
Everything you need to know about Shane Delia’s new venue Maha Bar, the northside sibling to his Maha restaurant, can be found within the four-bite must-order borek bun.