14 High Street, Inverleigh, 5265 1111
My score: 4/5
It’s not that I don’t like Geelong but I do love the new bypass that skirts our second city. On a good day, it feels like you zoom down the Westgate Bridge and three songs later you’re halfway to Adelaide. (Well, we were listening to Neil Young, so it was actually two songs later.) Inverleigh is about 20 minutes west of Geelong, not an obvious place for exciting contemporary food, but the unlikely location is part of the adventure and the joy.
Gladioli is a chef’s restaurant and it feels like it: the dining room is simple and comfortable, the service is friendly and well drilled but the excitement is on the plate. Matt Dempsey grew up in western Victoria and spent most of his career at nearby Pettavel where he worked his way up to head chef. His food is fancy, interesting and pretty, full of ‘ooh-ah’ moments, but nothing is just for show. Each dish has sensible underpinnings and delights in regional produce.
The meals are multicourse tasting menus so portions are smallish. A neat rectangle of trout is cured in salt, sugar and citrus zest and decorated with curls of daikon, avocado puree, tiny spheres of cucumber jelly and oil flavoured with nori seaweed. It’s clean, bright and shimmering. My favourite dish is a more robust assembly of crisp fried smoked eel, milk pudding, egg yolk and a puree of rocket and anchovies. It’s vigorous and earthy and uncompromising. You can tell Dempsey values flavour over frou-frou because his meat dishes concentrate on great cooking and saucing: slow-cooked lamb shoulder slumps in a sticky, sweet jus and a scrape of polenta. Beautifully rendered duck is served with parsnip puree, and is just begging for you to consider the Bannockburn showcase on the wine list here. Rare vintages – including some magnificent pinot noirs – have been especially chosen by the winemaker.
Desserts are fun and fruity. ‘Scones, jam and cream’ turns out to be a cute, tasty escapade in a jar. I lucked onto the last of the berries; autumn’s apples are about to make an appearance in their stead. Digging a spoon into froth and mining a hunk of lemonade scone is a smile on a spoon. Gladioli is balanced and well-paced. Dempsey’s food is evidence of serious talent but it doesn’t constantly scream ‘look at me!’ That makes it all the more easy to enjoy.
See their website.
More lazy lunches:
Grossi Florentino, 80 Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9662 1811
Recently reopened after a big refurbishment, the Florentino has been king of the long lunch for decades. Consider the suckling pig with black salsify and apple cider sauce.
Pei Modern, 45 Collins Street, Melbourne, 9654 8545
Sure, you might go in for a beer, a couple of oysters, maybe a few prawns with pork salt but before you know it, there’s an empty wine bottle and a head full of steam.
Lake House, King Street, Daylesford, 5348 3329
The number one rule about lunching at Lake House is to have nothing looming later that day. I don’t believe there’s a more relaxing, luxuriant dining room in Victoria.
First published in The Age, March 31, 2013
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