Ten Minutes by Tractor reopens rises from ashes but menu fails to totally fire
Long-time peninsula favourite Ten Minutes by Tractor has returned after being gutted by fire with a great new-look, but with a menu that’s more smouldering than on fire, writes Dan Stock.
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It’s 20 months since a fire floored one of the Mornington Peninsula’s favourite fine diners but 10 Minutes by Tractor is back in action in time for summer.
And it looks magnificent.
Still based on the original 1930s building that was the family home on this one-time apple orchard, the larger, improved restaurant features a cellar accessed by stunning spiral staircase (off limits to diners, for now, thanks to red tape), private dining room and views across the newly planted high-density chardonnay vineyard.
Moss-green swirled marble frames the windows – which open to welcome the warm summer’s night air – above a long velvet banquette. Dark-stained floorboards show off the gunmetal tablecloths surrounded by downy soft grey dining chairs.
Evocative landscape photography bookends the space with artful class.
Everything has been chosen with a keen eye; the ceramics, stemware and cutlery are all exquisite.
It’s these touches of expensive luxury that helps Ten Minutes to hold such sway over large swathes of the peninsula – mainly of the pastel-polo’d-and-preened Portsea variety – and already you’re looking at a month’s wait for a weekend table.
Wine lovers, of course, have long been drawn to one of the state’s best cellars but much of that collection was lost, sadly, in the fire that gutted the storage sheds back in February 2018.
That loss has trimmed the encyclopaedic tome into a more digestible format.
Let’s face it, the 100-page annotated beauty was really only read by wine nerds or one half of a couple that had long since run out of anything to say to each other over lunch.
The small, leather-bound list remains a document of considered beauty.
Vintages of the elegant and restrained estate wines feature, of course, but are joined by a celebration of the region that names peninsula makers alongside their wines.
There’s an extensive selection of fine, rare and worldly wines by the glass for oenophiles to ooh and aah over, while gloriously flamboyant Riedel decanters add theatre when cracking into a three-(or even four) figured bottle.
It’s a list created with love by owner Martin Spedding and tended to by manager Jacques Savary de Beauregard and sommelier Xavier Vigier who bring firepower to the otherwise young team ferrying plates from the open kitchen staffed by chefs in olive green shirts and grey aprons.
Those chefs are led by Adam Sanderson, who brings with him more than two decades spent in some of the world’s best restaurants – Fat Duck, Noma – and joined the team just a few months before the fire.
He’s serving a five ($145) or eight ($195) course “our choice” menu alongside a three course “your choice” for $100.
Given he’s had the best part of two years to think about and work on this re-debut menu, it’s surprisingly restrained.
He’s showing his experience in not throwing every trick at the plate, though the result is underwhelming.
There’s no faulting the technique or produce on show, for instance, in roasted Bundarra pork belly and loin, the meat tender and juicy and smoky and covered with a thin sheath of kohlrabi for crunch.
The small square of smoked eel and large quenelle of eel cream, however, seem bemusedly lost alongside.
A generous piece of hapuku poached in brown butter is nicely cooked and teamed with asparagus and oyster mushrooms but completely drowned in a too-rich, too heavy-handed hollandaise.
Beforehand, neither daubs of smoked beetroot nor spears of white asparagus could save Eugowra quail that was under-seasoned and overcooked, though a bowl of picked blue swimmer crab with succulents, salmon roe and a dusting of lemon myrtle snow was enjoyably generous to a fault.
Though those entrees hit the table almost an hour after seating, the kitchen cleverly buys time and goodwill with a few gratis snacks beforehand that include a steak tartare in one-bite form and a crumpet topped with lamb tongue and lovage, as well as buttermilk beer bread served warm from the oven.
An excellent Sydney rock oyster, however, was oddly dressed in a cream sauce, and though undoubtedly tasty, I’d hardly call a sweet, cloying chocolate-and-coffee take on a White Russian a “palate cleanser” before dessert.
Both of which, though, are outstanding.
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A thick, creamy-sharp buttermilk panna cotta is brightened by a terrific pea sorbet and joined by a medley of fresh peas, roasted pine nuts and juicy cucumber finished with a pine needle snow. It’s vibrant, clever, revelatory and spectacularly good.
Likewise a goat’s cheese bavarois that looks like an old-school jelly slice that’s the perfect balance of sweet and tart thanks to rhubarb’s sharpness.
They finish the meal that was otherwise enjoyably posh, but beige, on a high.
Were every dish as unique, deft and delicious then the new-look tractor really would be smoking hot.
TEN MINUTES BY TRACTOR - 14.5/20
Main Ridge