The Long Table

I ONCE had the pleasure of listening to a woman in the store Books for Cooks complaining about the lack of good restaurants on the Mornington Peninsula while she piled up copies of Giorgio Locatelli and Stephanie Alexander tomes for her Portsea weekender. From her point of view, it was a matter of survival. From my point of view, it was a textbook case of schadenfreude.

Moving briskly along from the twin spikes of my petty jealousy and malevolent glee, she was absolutely right. The Mornington Peninsula (I'm already showing my outsider credentials; those who live or weekend there, I'm told, refer to it simply as ''the peninsula'') is not a place that does the comfortable bistro very well. Winery restaurants with architecturally significant dining rooms and bucolic views - OK, they do have a few of those, and very nice they can be, too.

But the sort of place that you're likely to want to visit for anything from a quick bite or a glass of wine to the full-monty three-course meal hasn't been the peninsula's forte. In fact, the eating options hovering between somewhere noisy and cheerful to take the kids and the starched fine-dining winery palaces have been decidedly limited. Letters to the editor can be sent to the usual address.

Then there's the Long Table, which is a different type of peninsula restaurant. It straddles the great divide - at once the home of some good cooking and an easier vibe that makes it neither so intimidating nor so special-occasion as the competition.

The Long Table is in a garden-variety shopping strip, for starters. No killer views - it's across the way from a beautician (sorry, day spa) and a butcher (purveyor of fine meats?) and from the street level it hides its natural charms under a bushel (or at least a stand of grey gums). Once inside, it's far more tactile than sterile: multi-tiered with timber floors and furniture, warmed with French provincial lighting; decorative stands of seasonal fruit that back the menu's regional-seasonal mission statement; and a couple of open fires that are just the ticket when the temperature and the crowds are down.

I was pretty happy to spend several hours there on a bitterly cold winter's night. It felt homely without being compromised, and the table of landed gentry nearby were pleased with the noise levels and the food, which they declared better than at a prominent local winery restaurant.

The Long Table is the classic husband-and-wife enterprise: he's in the kitchen, she's running the floor. Samantha Fitzgerald runs a relaxed ship. She and her two staff members were moving a little slowly but at least they were philosophically opposed to constantly asking how everything was.

A wine bar with a snacky menu takes the lower floor. The wine list is less parochial than plenty in the area and moderately priced, going so far as to offer BYO on Sunday nights with no corkage fee.

Andrew Doughton is the one in the kitchen. He and Fitzgerald opened their restaurant about eight years ago and things seem to be going smoothly - even when Doughton doesn't actually appear to be in the kitchen on this particular evening. Whoever was putting the meals together did a bang-up job, although I'm professionally obliged to dob and say the fruit component was an oversight in the winter leaf and pear salad. Nor did the Coffin Bay oysters ($3.50 each) strike me as bursting with the freshness of the truly freshly shucked.

But there's so much to like about this place, including a couple of memorable entrees, such as the poached cube of Spanish mackerel ($18) cutting an austere figure in a shallow bowl, surrounded by some curls of carrot encircling a thick fennel mayo. It's finished with a buttermilk foam that has richness-adding presence instead of being well-intentioned bubbles of nothing, and a salty-sour green pile of wakame nudges along the taste of the sea.

Also good was one of the two vego entrees, a slow-cooked duck-egg yolk set atop a fluffy salt-cod brandade ($19) with a parsnip puree and crisp little bits of potato ''scratchings''. As tastily mouth-coating as the menu promised, it's the only one of four savoury courses we tried that didn't go down the sous-vide path.

The water bath is a favoured piece of kitchen equipment at the Long Table, with everything that entails philosophically about modern cooking. There's certainly a sexlessness to the resulting proteins, a uniformity that doesn't necessarily fit with the rusticity of the setting.

But I have no argument with the way curing the duck in plastic for 12 hours (with sugar and salt) manages to improve on nature underneath its sherry-toffeed skin. Slices of medium-rare breast share the plate with parsnip puree, spiced prunes and vinegar-sharpened shimeji mushrooms finished with a wintry sticky glaze of a sauce.

The pork belly ($37) has also benefited from a final blast of direct heat, the fat rendered away to leave a perfect thin sliver of crackle on top. Powerful flavours are at work: choucroute (a Frenchified sauerkraut) and a couple of the Japanese influences that are dotted throughout the menu (smoked eel cream, which works well against the pork, and a mustard-like dollop of white miso that's like an umami bomb going off). It's a brave dish that works.

Desserts (all $14) hold up their end. Poached pear with a loose liquorice jelly, a scoop of ginger ice-cream and - a worthy savoury addition - salted oats. Nice, although the maple sugar parfait with a mousse-like chocolate delice is less apologetic about being a dessert.

The Long Table is an improbable contender among the peninsula's better restaurants. Driving past, you mightn't even know it's there. The classic quiet achiever, its reputation deserves to spread to Portsea weekenders and further afield.

Food Contemporary

Where 159 Shoreham Road, Red Hill South

Phone 5989 2326

Cost Typical entree, $19; main, $37; dessert, $14

Licensed and BYO Sunday night BYO wine only (no corkage)

Wine list Local, European and New Zealand; well-priced

We drank Even Keel riesling (Clare Valley, South Australia), $11/$47

Owners Andrew Doughton and Samantha Fitzgerald

Chef Andrew Doughton

Vegetarian Two entrees, one main

Wheelchairs Yes

Parking Car park

Noise A subdued murmur

Service Sometimes a bit too relaxed

Value Fair

Web thelongtable.com.au

Cards AE MC V Eftpos

Hours Wed-Fri, 6pm-late; Sat-Sun, noon-late (extended hours in summer)