Roving Marrow

Chicken skin crisps served at Roving Marrow.

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The Astor, corner Lygon and Elgin Streets, Carlton 9347 7419

My score: 4/5

I have a dream. It involves snacks. The snacks come to me. They are endlessly replenished and of infinite variety. There is crunchy chicken skin, juicy beef, rice pudding with candied lemon peel, rich chocolate with honeycomb. In my dream, I am sated and glowing. Waking was always a grand snack-less disappointment. Until last Sunday when I went to Roving Marrow’s contemporary yum cha.

Here is the dream writ real: modern snacks and share plates dispensed from an open kitchen, then pushed on a trolley through a small, smart dining room. The trolley is topped up then the snacks glide past again, ripe for plucking. It’s a sweet concept that makes for a dreamy Sunday lunch, popular with dressed up double-daters and happy groups.

Roving Marrow is the dining room at The Astor, a pub I’d last visited when it was owned by 1970s Carlton footballer Percy Jones, who propped up either side of the bar with the same alacrity he deployed in the ruck. Now it’s a modern watering hole and restaurant with pale ale on tap and a ‘G and Tea’ comprising gin (so far so normal) and kombucha (a hip fermented tea).

The pub is owned by Darran Smith, a hospitality lifer who caught the bug after watching Michael J. Fox in The Concierge. Cue a stint on the Gold Coast carrying suitcases. Restaurants seemed a better bet and Smith schooled up in the last days of fine dining, flambéing tableside, soaking up and dispensing theatre. Sydney stints with Luke Mangan (Glass), Maurice Terzini (Icebergs) and Justin Hemmes (Hemmesphere) followed – that is to say, Smith trained at the Harvard of hospitality before moving to Melbourne to buy a scungy old boozer.

Roving Marrow’s English chef is Charles Woodward, who worked with Nuno Mendes in London. Mendes is a star Portuguese chef who rethinks classics: his Caesar salad made with lettuce emulsion created a sensation. The Mendes influence in Carlton can be seen in the playful reworking of archetypes, a close connection to producers, and in techniques such as fermentation, pickling and smoking. That might make the food sound complicated. It’s not: technique is wielded in thoughtful, subtle ways.

Crisp shards of chicken skin are a base for whey-fermented radish slices and a mayonnaise made with the radish tops. (That frugality is typical. Jerusalem artichoke chips are dusted with a powder made from dehydrated orange peel, fish is given a faux wasabi treatment with mustard leaf stems.) Spanish mackerel is sweet fleshed and crisp-skinned, its oily flesh highlighted by a verdant, spicy nettle puree that’s softened and deepened by seafood stock. Simple. Clever. Tasty.

Thin slices of pork belly are Sunday roast perfection, with rendered fat and crisp glossy strips of crackling. Beef intercostals (from between the ribs) are melted to meaty submission. Some larger dishes are delivered by hand but second helpings come trundling by on the trolley. I love it. There’s no way you could leave hungry. A bottomless drink-matching scenario makes it hard to depart thirsty too.

On other days, Roving Marrow’s food style is similar but service is traditional a la carte. Sundays are looser, a little experimental and seem designed to turn happily hazy. In fact, if this is reality, I’ll take it. I think I like it even better than my dream.

See their website.

More On the Trolley:

Merricote, 81 High Street, Northcote, 9939 4762.
Among the certified highlights of Northcote is the cheese trolley at this cosy European bistro. It’s a great place to go gaga over beautiful hard and soft cheeses.

Golden Dragon Palace, 363 Manningham Road, Lower Templestowe, 9852 4087.
This massive restaurant does traditional trolley yum cha every lunch time and is completely au fait with large groups and spring-roll-strewn kids. Bookings recommended.

Epocha, 49 Rathdowne Street, Carlton, 9036 4949.
The dessert trolley has been a delightful feature through the four-year epoch of this graceful city-edge restaurant. It might be laden with chocolate delice, pannacotta, crème caramel and tarte tatin,

Gold Leaf, Level 1, Star Circus, Harbour Town, Docklands, 9670 1128.
There’s Cantonese yum cha every day for lunch and dinner and it’s always busy so you know everything is fresh. Gold Leaf is right by the observation wheel so you can double down on dumplings before or after a spin.

First published in The Age, 30th July 2016.