KIN Rutherglen restaurant review 2023: Kara Monssen visits All Saints Estate
Some of the best things in life are free, and at this new-look Rutherglen winery restaurant, so are the snacks— and that’s just one of many surprises.
Food
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Hot chips are great, but at KIN, make way for the wholesome potato salad.
Like the one mum makes for a family barbie, springy with herbs and zest for life.
Those pink-skinned spuds sing of flavour, grown in Albury just over the border, and not far from chef Jack Cassidy’s Rutherglen castle kitchen at All Saints Estate.
They’re cooked in their skins just enough to hold shape without fraying, yet soft and smushable. Spring onion cuts through rich mayo, which is surprisingly vegan.
The most exciting part? It won’t cost you extra.
Spoiler alert — surprise snacks lead a spectacular spread cooked by the Jackalope alumni.
Another is the focaccia, two squishy golden wodges to wad in olive oil or to cushion the salt and vinegar blows of white anchovy, olive and pickled pepper gildas.
Teeny one-bite toms filled with goat’s cheese were swoon-worthy, as were choc-fudge chews to end.
What comes between is delicious, ingredient-driven cooking paying respect to the land on which it was grown – impressively, 70 per cent of the menu is sourced from Rutherglen.
Cassidy earned his keep at kitchens across the country —Bistro Guillaume at Crown, Hotel Sorrento, Bedarra Island Resort in Far North Queensland, and Jackalope, before taking the reins at the winery restaurant last December.
Siblings Nick, Angela and Eliza Brown run the family wine-making business and estate. A long, tree-lined driveway leads to the red-brick expanse, which underwent a multimillion-dollar facelift in 2021.
On site there are two places to eat: Bonnie, the winery’s pizzeria, and KIN, which opened in the former Terrace restaurant earlier this year. The 120-seater is lively and bright, while preserving the building’s history.
Much like the architecture, classic and modern plays are also seen in Cassidy’s cooking.
It’s a simple script to follow — choose either two or three courses (with bonus snacks), which don’t stray too far from the familiar yet brim with creativity.
Take fine kangaroo meat, threaded on to skewers, gussied in wattleseed and cooked over coals, or those fine pork jowl slivers, fanned over a fat scallop, annoited with salmon roe.
A work of art.
Dark horse dish, ox-heart tomato, sees a lone, plump fellow cooked in its own juices and decorated with saltbush. Those salty flakes howl wickedly of umami, keeping this rightly delicious. The Murray cod is a nod to Cassidy’s Bistro Guillaume days, with classic techniques honouring the simple beauty of perfectly cooked fish and chewy clams in a mussel cream.
Those glorious hunks of lamb run wild with flavour and frivolity, especially with a pour of the estate’s jammy GSM blend.
Speaking of wine, Nick has curated the list, largely from All Saints and sister winery St Leonard’s new releases, with a palate cleansing French or Italian drop providing welcome variety.
Classic cocktails and beers help the cause, too — the muscat fizz with tonic gives the region’s stuffy fortified grape a new lease on life.
KIN embodies that ethos, too –a modern restaurant, helmed by a young chef, injecting new lifeblood into a historic winery and region.
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