The Sydney Morning Herald logo
Advertisement

Editor's letter

Kirsten Lawson

Vitello tonnato, veal with tuna mayonnaise.
Vitello tonnato, veal with tuna mayonnaise.Emiko Davies

Today we welcome a new recipe writer, Emiko Davies, who has three gorgeous dishes for Valentine's Day.

This classic Italian menu reflects Davies' seven years living in Florence, where she taught photography, studied art restoration, and began her food blog.

Davies grew up in Canberra and returned to live here this year. Her recipes are highly achievable, and if you're not heading out to eat on Friday, these would be a very good way to impress your friend at home.

Vitello tonnato - the classic Italian dish of cold veal with tuna mayonnaise - is a great idea for this time of year. I ate this dish at Mezzalira on the weekend, and it was quite brilliant.

Advertisement

In with the new, out with the old. As you might have heard, I'm giving up this unbeatable gig as food editor to take on the unenviable job of political reporter covering the inimitable characters of the ACT parliament. I'm looking forward to the new job, and you can look forward to a new face at the helm of this section. I finish on Friday, so I'll have one more edition.

Natasha Rudra, who reviews for this section, becomes editor when she returns from an eating trip to the United States; meantime, Karen Hardy is in the chair. You're in good hands.

The pace of change over seven years is astonishing to me, with the early explosion in small-scale producers of excellent food, and then people value-adding with artisan food products - a combination of the accessible productive countryside around Canberra, the advent of the farmers' markets, and the public servants with the courage to not only dream but also take the plunge into business. And now we're being nearly drowned out by the cacophony of street-vibe eateries and bars. There's a level of grooviness at which the city has not yet arrived, but you'd have to say we're getting pretty close.

New plans for Lonsdale St

The Trimboli brothers are full steam ahead with new eatery plans, signing off on new space in their Lonsdale Street building for an indoor-outdoor wine bar and an eat-in, take-out Italian grocer.

Advertisement

Pasquale Trimboli says the Italian wine bar site is behind their restaurant, Italian and Sons, and will serve as an outdoor dining space for the restaurant as well as a bar. He’s not revealing the site of the grocer yet, since it’s still occupied, but it’s in the same block fronting Lonsdale Street and will seat up to 200. It will also have a large outdoor space which Trimboli, also an architect, wants to make into the city’s best outdoor dining space.

The Trimbolis are advertising for a chef and they have scheduled an opening date for the second half of the year.

In one of those strange circles of the Canberra dining scene, Mick Chatto now heads the kitchen at Italian and Sons, with Carolyn Miller taking six months off. Among Chatto’s former ventures in Canberra were Artespresso about five years ago and Pelagic in 2011.

But that’s not all. Trimboli says the promised hole-in-the-wall wine bar at his other restaurant, Mezzalira, on London Circuit, will open this month. They’ve taken over a stairwell between Mezzalira and Charcoal, just 1.6m wide and 6m deep, and are turning it into a “pizzicheria”, called Da Rosario, after Trimboli’s father. You sit or stand on the sidewalk, for a glass of wine and a snack – marinated sardines, cheese and panini. Excellently cool.

The long-awaited refurbishment of Mezzalira is also scheduled for this year.

Advertisement

Caterer branches out

They’re populating Lonsdale Street at an astonishing rate, with news of yet another new eatery to open there at the end of this month. Oliver’s at Braddon in the Mode 3 building is the venture of Oliver Buecher, a long-time caterer in Canberra.

Buecher’s company is Edge Catering, which will operate from one unit in the building, and in another he will open a cafe where you can eat or order takeaway from 7am to 5.30pm. As he puts it, you can get a burger at 7am, a doughnut with chocolate sauce at 5.29pm, and Asian meals, pasta and sandwiches – with the option to pre-order online. At night, it will be a function space, and Buecher says they’ve spent $900,000 on the fit-out.

Buecher set up Connoisseur Catering, which he subsequently sold, and had the catering contract at the Labor Club in Belconnen.

This Friday, he’s in charge of the menu for the Valentine’s Day train. The “what?”, you and me both ask. This is the train run by the Australian Railway Historical Society, where you travel from Canberra to Goulburn and back over sunset (leaving 6.15pm, returning 11.45pm). You can dine in the Heritage car, and listen to the Canberra Brass Swing Band for afters.

Advertisement

The menu offers prawn cocktail or pumpkin and fetta tart, beef Wellington or grilled chicken, and pavlova or brownies for dessert ($155 in the air-conditioned carriage; $135 without, 6232 6405, canberrarailwaymuseum.org). Sounds very soothing.

Making a gewurztraminer

Vintage has started already in the district’s wineries, with Ken Helm, pictured, picking grapes last weekend, February 8 and 9, for the early-ripening gewurztraminer. You might remember this variety as one of your nightmares of the 1980s, but Helm says the problem back then was the grape was grown in warm areas, whereas it needs cool climates. Warm regions produced oily wines so winemakers stopped fermentation early to leave residual sugar to cover the oiliness. But the result was overly sweet wines. In the ’70s and ’80s Wyndham Estate TR2 was one of the biggest selling wines in Australia, he says. He’s making a classic Alsatian dry style, aiming to capture the aromatic and spicy characteristics of the grape. Helm hasn’t made a gewurztraminer since 2001. The grape is named after the village in northern Italy where it came from, Tramine, and you should pronounce it, Helm advises, “gewurztraMEENer”, in case, like me, you were in the habit of shortening that vowel.

Non-stop mockery

The sight of Tim Kirk plaintively calling after a receding car of filmmakers, “But I’m winemaker of the year”, is one you won’t see often from a winemaker more used to being venerated than mocked. But when Chris Taylor from the Chaser team is involved, you take it as it comes.

Advertisement

Kirk, pictured, with Taylor, right, and filmmaker Nathan Earl, left, isn’t the only one on the end of this good-natured mockumentary, launched this week at youtube.com/roadtoplonk. Nick Spencer at Eden Road is unceremoniously spat on as Taylor tries to master the niceties of cellar-door swirling and spitting, and Ken Helm loses a load of red wine through the bungling of a film crew member.

Taylor fronts the online only, five-part series called Plonk, which starts today with an episode on the Murrumbateman area. The film crew is ostensibly looking for a female winemaker. And it finds her in the form of Jaime Crowe, from Four Winds, filmed with a busload of women at a hen’s party.

Also part of the show is the Capital Wines cellar door at Gundaroo.

Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.

Sign up

From our partners

Advertisement
Advertisement