The Boat House by the Lake

What is it about views and fine dining? Would we refuse to drive to a restaurant on a hilltop or by an isolated lakeside to sit on stools with somebody’s eclectic playlist and a sommelier in green Converses pouring tasting glasses of a Sicilian red made sans intervention? I wouldn’t have thought so, but it’s clear that something about these look-at-my-city locations seems to give rise to fine dining the quiet way, fine dining for couples.

The Boat House by the Lake is one of these places and in its current incarnation is aiming at the firmly modern end of fine dining, degustation style and heavy on the fancy stuff, foams, nitro, savoury ice-creams and the like.

You choose a six-course degustation ($100) or a set-price four-course menu ($80), with four choices, including a vegetarian option in each course. The four course is basically two entree-style dishes, a main-type dish and a dessert, although when you’re getting sweet-corn ice-cream with one of the entrees and celeriac ice-cream with a dessert, things are clearly mixed up with some abandon.

The location is pristine, looking out on the still, still waters of the lake, a fire at one end of the room, just a dozen well-spaced tables. Service is good, all of the wait staff able to explain the dishes.

Slightly crazed breads arrive to start, with butter that they’ve smoked (subtle, gentle and likeable) and served with black salt. One of the breads is fennel seed, the other linseed flavoured and shaped to look like a pair of beetroots, made dark with squid ink. It’s a welcome start, the texture of the bread is reasonable, the look is pretty cool, and once you’ve seen that you’re primed for what’s to come.

The wine list is a thoughtful and good selection, but is hard to get a handle on given its arrangement into categories like “big, bold”, and “fuller, meatier”, “delicate, fragrant”, “spicy, earthy”, which might be vaguely useful at one level, but is pretty arbitrary at another. The list has a serious go at the Canberra wines.

First up is “smoked corn, nitro stilton, pickled pear, sesame, lychee”. The smoked corn turns out to be ice-cream, brashly smoky; unsubtle use of the smoker is everywhere in Canberra and it’s something I haven’t understood. The pickled pear adds good crunch and is delicate with spice, the nitro machine has exploded the stilton into light crumbs to what purpose I’m not sure but it gives a nice lightness to a strong cheese, the sesame is in little crackers. A logical set of ingredients which work well together, other than the corn.

Foie gras, duxelle and bresaola ravioli, pedro ximenez, eshallot does not appear to be an actual ravioli, but bresaola shaped into a ravioli round, the foie gras in the creamy, gently pungent sauce, with some unusual little toasts in here. Okay, but in the summation really a complex way of serving bresaola.

Octopus, wild rice, chilli Szechuan jam, pig skin, avruga is a favourite dish for us. The four-hour sous-vide-cooked octopus tentacles are lovely, so much meaty texture and bite but tender too, and charred on the outside. The wild rice is hot with chilli, a nice heat, and black with squid ink, but too sweet. The crackling, though, is a lovely piggy couple of mouthfuls filled with avruga caviar – a great combination.

Forest mushroom, red miso, Jerusalem artichoke, sweet potato is a busy dish mixing umami flavours, the sweet potato roasted and dried in little star shapes, the artichoke in a kind of mousse, nicely charry mushrooms, and a very salty layer also. Earthy, which is good, but rather complicated.

We like our mains best, and it’s no coincidence they’re the most simple of the dishes tonight. Veal, pea, brussels sprout, parmesan, beer, has chunks of veal just seared and rare, a little chewy in a good way, the peas as a substantial puree – none of the silly smearing you see at so many places, the brussel sprouts nicely caramelised, a parmesan crisp adding saltiness, a parmesan foam adding not much.

Beef flank, grilled cucumber, red cabbage, horseradish and mayonnaise again has good chunks of nicely rare meat, with a great chariness from the grill, a thick horseradish sauce, rather cloying red cabbage, served jam style with nice sour elements but sweetness that could be dialled right down, crunchy grilled cucumber that we like, and radicchio. Other than the sweetness in the red cabbage, this dish also works for us.

Desserts take their lead from the entrees; there’s a lot going on and more than is strictly necessary or desirable. In the view of this critic, fancy is only justified when it begins with deep respect for an ingredient and does something with that ingredient that helps you see it in a new light. As in, food first, process second.

Quince, amazaki, quinoa crunch, chestnut, bitter chocolate is half a quince, aromatic from its sake poaching, what an excellent fruit this is. It has a rice-pudding-style layer, made with fermented rice. On top is a sweet crunch made with quinoa, which we don’t enjoy so much, especially with the chocolate and little pieces of chestnut which has the overall effect of reminding you of a muesli bar.

Nitro walnut mousse, honey parsnip, pomegranate and banana has the surprise addition of celeriac ice-cream – refreshing but very out of context. The walnut mousse is likeable, exploded as it has been by the nitro treatment, which leaves it light but kind of unruly. The strips of honeyed parsnip taste just as you’d expect, and underneath there’s a banana caramel reminding you of banoffee pie, which this dessert also resembles in its messiness – not a bad thing in a dessert.

So that’s dinner at the Boat House, a pleasant setting, professional service and an interesting meal which reaches its better points in its more simple moments.