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Grazing, Gundaroo

Kirsten Lawson

Ox cheek braised in Pedro Ximenez sherry.
Ox cheek braised in Pedro Ximenez sherry.Jeffrey Chan

Good Food hat15/20

Modern Australian$$$

I have long loved the sheer atmospherics of dinner at Grazing. The drive into the country, so you arrive in need of comfort, the 150-year-old history of the building so you can romanticise the days where a trip to Gundaroo would have been a day on a horse and you'd need stables out the back before you stumbled into the welcome of a hotel, the open fires that bring such crackling beauty to dinner in the cool months, the plethora of little rooms that you eat in. All that is easy to fall for. But on this visit we fall for the food as well, which feels a step up from our other visits in recent years. 

We've previously felt a bit of a strain in a menu that emphasises country and coat-of-arms credentials, with the likes of rabbit, trout, kangaroo and smoked meats from the nearby Poachers Pantry. This time, things feel more pared back and focused while still essentially hearty and country in style. 

We start happily with fresh buns, not brilliant bread, but fresh, seeded and light, good with the local olive oil and plum vinegar. The duck liver pate (all entrees $17) is super smooth and very mild, an easy-eating pate and a good start with its rather hard toasts that annul any specialness that might come with the promised house-baked walnut sourdough, and an excellent little pile of fried celery leaves.

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Frozen caramel and salted hazelnut custard.
Frozen caramel and salted hazelnut custard.Jeffrey Chan

The ravioli entree is not a delicate dish. It's a single very large round of pasta, chocker with shredded venison – a simple filling, very meaty, perfectly enjoyable, if a little odd to have so much meat in the context of ravioli. The pasta here is really just a very big pouch, resembling a pasta pie. The slices of mushroom and parmesan on top are sensible with the dish.

A main dish of oxtail (all mains $33) is one of the highs of tonight's meal. It's beautifully seasoned, and a really nice round of packed tender meat, braised in Pedro Ximenez according to the menu. It looks to have been seared on the outside for a caramelised flavour and crisp texture. On top is a great little pile of grated horseradish, and some beautifully treated roast baby carrots. It's on a pile of parsnip mash, but this is ultra smooth and doesn't shine with robust parsnip flavour.

The kangaroo is cooked rare, wobbly and red, a fillet that's been ash-rolled then sliced. It's good, the coating just adding a kind of dryness to the outside, the meat well handled. If you're looking to taste a little Aussie heritage, this is a mild, tender version of kangaroo that won't scare the horses - it's not gamey. It's served with a salty, good gremolata and white beans, beetroot puree, beetroot slices and dark-green kale - earthy and pretty good.

Chef Kurt Neumann.
Chef Kurt Neumann.Jeffrey Chan
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The steak, too, is confidently handled, properly cooked, a generous fat lump of meat. It's served with a tomato salsa and a moist potato bun, which has the strangest smoked flavour – one of the ingredients of this bun is listed as smoked veal marrow. Taking our own advice to always eat what's fresh from the garden here, we have a simple mixed-leaf salad, good for its freshness and robustness. A strength are the kids meals ($15) – fish and chips is a proper fillet of flathead done well; chips are great. Freshness is a really good element of the kids meals.

In the desserts, the kids are offered homemade chocolate or vanilla ice-cream, both delicious, or "frog in a pond" ($5). Desserts (all $16) are a highlight for the adults, too. This is a restaurant that gets the end of the meal beautifully right. The chocolate fondant is a dense and uncompromising, not the gauche or crowd-pleasing but unsweet and dark. It has fantastic rhubarb alongside and a chestnut ice-cream filled with chunks of toffee. The "frozen caramel and salted hazelnut custard" is like a semifreddo, rich with caramel and sweet with a chocolate dust and good chocolate ice-cream.

Service tonight has been considerably more professional and informed than we remember on previous visits. We're in good, confident hands. The wine list is almost fully local, and has rather an emphasis on wines from Capital Wines, which owns this building. If you want to drink by the glass, the region's flagship varieties of riesling and shiraz come only from Capital Wines, and you'll find rather an odd emphasis on sauvignon blanc and cabernet. But almost all the other good local wines are here, albeit mainly by the bottle. There's Gundaroo cider also. We leave happy with the firm conviction that Grazing is pleasingly offering much more than simply a romantic place to be.

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