Hobsons Bay Hotel: 28 Ferguson Street, Williamstown, 9397 5159
My score: 3.5/5
Here’s happy for you. A couple sketching on their grease-spotted, wine-stained paper table covering, dreaming today’s open for inspection into tomorrow’s renovated hearth and home. Double-daters hunched over an antipasto platter, swiping bread through the last scraps of thinly sliced, smoky eggplant, keenly coveting (though gallantly offering) the last bits of salami, frittata and bitey lentil salad. Chef Rosa Mitchell walking through her dining room, aproned, with a flour handprint on the seat of her jeans: there must be more fresh pasta on the way.
Rosa Mitchell cooked at Journal Canteen in Flinders Lane for four years, serving Italian lunches to citysiders who loved the urban rustic potluck experience. Now she’s been lured west to a made-over old pub by greater scope and the possibility to focus on local foodstuffs, including Victorian olive oil and the pesticide-free produce her brother is growing on his Daylesford farm. She’s also stumping up for both lunch and dinner and working off a menu, but finding it liberating rather than constricting.
Lunches are reminiscent of Canteen: simple but chosen, cooked and plated with such confidence and care that there’s simply nothing bad to say about them. There’s a fat, tender pork cutlet, criss-crossed with grill marks, thickly hemmed with fat, oozing flavour. There’s veal saltimbocca, two plump fillets swimming in butter with shards of prosciutto and sage leaves welded on top. There’s not much to it, really, but it’s rare to find restaurant dishes happy to strip things back like this. Likewise with the green salad: torn iceberg lettuce, finely sliced radish, light vinaigrette. There’s pasta, of course: the orecchiette is substantial and doughy, tossed with piles of peas, pancetta and ricotta. Dinner steps up a notch: there are crumbed mussels, beef rolled with wild chicory, slow-cooked lamb and marsala quail. Alongside such dishes, there’s a homely spaghetti napoli, topped with grilled eggplant and grated dried ricotta.
Desserts remind why some dishes are classics: our forks did bitter battle over cannoli stuffed with sweet ricotta, amazingly creamy chocolate semifreddo and a moist, puddingy plum and almond cake that’s sunshine yellow thanks to free-range farm-fresh egg yolks.
The pub dining room is modern and comfortable though not particularly atmospheric; hard surfaces bounce chatter and clatter. Staffing restaurants is never easy and Mitchell is yet to get the place humming as she’d like to. What is on song is the food: honest, spirited, and very likely to make you happy.
Also in the west:
Wee Jeanie, 50 Anderson Street, Yarraville, 9687 7187.
The folk behind Cornershop aren’t quite easing the local cafe crush by opening around the corner because their new place is as petite as the name suggests. However, the homely food and atmosphere is a huge upside.
Duchess of Spotswood, 87 Hudsons Road, Spotwood, 9391 6016.
The autumn menu at this Spotswood saviour includes a new rendition of the Simple Pleasures breakfast dish: sauteed potato, artichokes, radicchio and chestnuts are served with toast and, if you like, eggs. For lunch, maybe braised ox-tail with semolina and scallops. No bookings.
Aangan, 559 Barkly Street, West Footscray, 9689 4175.
Try the Chinese-skewed dishes at this eager Indian restaurant: there’s chicken chow mein and Manchurian dumplings alongside tandoor favourites and homestyle goat curry.
First published in The Age, April 24, 2011
Leave A Comment