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Vin Cellar

Larissa Dubecki
Larissa Dubecki

Good Food hat15/20

Modern Australian

WINE? My dining companions fall into two categories: those who prefer to choose it before the food, and those who prefer to do it after. Personally, I just like to drink it. But anyone ought to take umbrage at waiters who expect diners to choose wine before laying eyes on a menu. Unless we're talking about the kind of people who put their shoes on before their pants each morning, it doesn't make sense.

Not to suggest such a travesty would occur at Vin, despite it being about as wine-focused as a restaurant can be. For some readers that will be a deal-breaker, based on the cliches about sommeliers and poles and rectums. But there's plenty of veritas in this Prahran operation. You don't have to be fluent in the wankier excesses of wine-speak to feel at home. There's an invitation to partisanship but it's not a requirement of entry: advice, while going well beyond pinot-goes-with-duck insights, is not looking for every opportunity to make madam or sir feel inferior.

And it's the whole package I'm talking about in asserting Vin is worth visiting. It's not overly busy — a crime when places with only half its virtues are pumping — but the food and wine have reached a humming sync that makes it a good place to park your dining dollar.

A while ago it was not so harmonious. A Thai focus made the heavy bottom end of the list — the Bordeaux, the super-Tuscans — little more than a tease. Frustrating, if you were dining with wine-then-food kind of people.

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The chef is Trumble Dewe. Three months ago, not too long after taking over, he scored Vin's first hat in The Age Good Food Guide. Not bad for a 25-year-old. His food mixes orthodoxy — you can tell the kid's French-trained — with a very considered use of more avant-garde technique. It makes a lot of sense when considered against the very broad canvas of Vin's 55-page wine list.

When you're talking wine matches — and it's almost impossible not to in a place where each dish is listed with a wine suggestion and the full list is heavy enough to cut off the blood supply to your legs — the most memorable comes early in the piece with an entree of quail ($16) and a beautiful Beechworth chardonnay.

Roasted bits of bird dusted in pistachio shavings pose meaningfully around a rectangular white plate with quenelles of duck liver parfait and a slow-cooked egg yolk — was this particular item enshrined in restaurant legislation when my back was turned? It's full of flavour, the bird's cooking time well judged, the palate-coating excesses of it all undermined by a few crisp spears of asparagus and a small ration of sticky orange sauce.

As for that swoon-worthy '05 Savaterre, it's full-bodied without an ounce of flab and a presence that makes you think there's an extra person at the table. It's $23 a glass but if you're looking for justification, a) it's almost a course in itself, b) you can get a half-glass for $11.50 and, c) it's worth it. Together they demand inclusion in the special heaven reserved for pairs that go ineluctably together. (Also see: bogans and polyester, John and Janette, up and down.)

And never fear: prices aren't all top-drawer. Once revolutionary, the policy is that bottles are sold at bottle-shop prices: add $5 a pop to drink in-house. But, in attitude, it's very much a restaurant. There are candy-striped banquettes in Veuve Clicquot orange, mood-setting charcoal floors and walls, table linen for decorum and vintage glass-framed liquor advertising posters vying for attention with the wine collection.

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I'm not hip to every match. An entree of Crystal Bay prawns ($17) draws the dud dance partner in the Holly's Garden, a sweet popsicle of a ripe and full-bodied pinot gris ($8.50/$42). The shellfish are easier to like, tossed about with a lively spring-appropriate collection of parsley, nashi and broad beans and with the right subtle acid from pomelo — like grapefruit, without the sharpness — and green papaya.

But rose (an '09 Spinifex, $7.50/$37.50) stands up to prove its food-friendliness with pan-fried John Dory ($32) on a slick of pureed pumpkin gussied up with gelatinous rounds of celeriac and onion jam. It borders on too sweet, but the milk "crumbs", which resemble crumbled ricotta but pack more of a sour punch, perform the unexpected and haul it into line. Food-wise, I also liked the more straightforward beef cheeks braised into a collapsing mass of peppery fibres, with smoked tomato and shallots ($33); while the bowl of seasonal vegetables ($15) cooked every which way — pan-fried, roasted, raw, and a couple of techniques that haven't been invented yet — excited as vegetables rarely do.

I usually order dessert as an excuse to drink Pedro Ximenez ($12.50) and it wasn't hard to find the right candidate here: vanilla-poached apple, topped with red quinoa, gingerbread ice-cream and candied walnuts ($16). It's toastier and warmer than any fruit and ice-cream-based dessert has a right to be and, at the risk of sounding like Greg Evans, another perfect match.

Downright old-fashioned was a mandarin cake topped with yoghurty sorbet icing ($15): as respectable as grandmother's tea party, it was dandified with little jubes of compressed melon.

There are faults, too. No mirrors in the loos — awkward after eating parsley. The little dish of dusty cracked pepper on the table. Who stole the grinder? And, depending on who's serving, the occasional incident of pouring wines by the glass out of sight. You probably won't want to be forking out $23 for 150 millilitres on trust alone. But the biggest disappointment of the night came when the Veuve Clicquot bottle plonked on the table turned out to contain water. You might have cost yourselves a point there, guys.

SCORE: 15/20

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Larissa DubeckiLarissa Dubecki is a writer and reviewer.

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