Áuge Ristorante
22 Grote Street
Adelaide
South Australia 5000
w www.auge.com.au
e enquiries@auge.com.au
t +61 8 8410 9332
f +61 8 8410 9335
open Lunch Tuesday to Friday 12 noon till 3.00 pm, dinner Tuesday to Saturday 6.00 pm till late
FOOD It had been a long time since my last visit to Áuge Ristorante and a busy Friday lunch they were almost full with a large group. Unannounced (not a good idea at any time) I was lucky to get a table.
Menus arrived promptly and like everywhere in Adelaide, almost before you get into your seat the water question is posed. Water? Doesn’t anyone drink anymore? Wouldn’t restaurants have bigger bills if they asked what you’d like to drink instead? The sad fact is most restaurants make more from water than they do from wine but the hard sell has become positively obnoxious.
At Áuge they do a great lunch deal (Tuesday to Friday) two courses $39 and three $49, but since it had been so long between visits choosing from the main menu seemed obligatory.
Bread arrives without additional charge but given the quality of the rest of the meal the bread at Áuge needs to be better not the sort of roll you might expect at a banquet function and no match for the good oil it came with.
Prices are mainly modest but do venture into the high end of Adelaide. $18 for a selection of two slices meats or $22 for a selection of cured meats to share. Appetisiers range from $5.50 for marinated Coriole olives with grissini to $22 for what is basically salt and pepper squid. This dish is universally detested by chefs and loved by the general public. Pastas and risottos are available as mains and entrees and appropriately list some house made pastas. Entrees range from $22 to $24 with five selections.
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Wine is serious business at Áuge and right the venison.
Pan–fried sweetbreads with lambs tongue carpaccio, sweetbread cannelloni and braised leek $22 were ordered. The two pieces of sweetbread were so perfectly prepared it was tempting to beg the chef for a plateful. The cannelloni was not pasta wrapped, but a roll wrapped in leek that either needed to be cooked longer or taken from deeper into the leek where it would have been cuttable. The filling was delicious and clever a wet but crumbly mix of all the little bits that fall from the sweetbreads when they are cleaned. The tongue given the carpaccio label might have been raw, was cooked but not quite to the fatty silken stage. Three tiny caramelised vinegar pickled onions added a tasty spike to the dish. Despite the leek wrap, a very minor criticism, the dish was exceptionally good, beautifully plated, perfectly portioned and properly seasoned.
The mention of baby herbs sends shivers of fear up my spine, but at the waiter’s recommendation oven roasted venison loin with cracked farrow and baby herbs was chosen. Curiously their menu, which is pleasantly unwordy, failed to mention the beautiful baby vegetables and roasted pickling onion that perfectly complimented the venison. Although the venison was deeply ringed with well–cooked meat indicating rapid rather than slow resting it was divinely tender and the venison was not smothered in a million other flavours or ingredients allowing it to be the centerpiece of the dish another very good dish.
Áuge takes their cheeses seriously but the apple ravioli with cinnamon tea ricotta cake and frozen zabaglione $16.50 was ordered. Dessert pastas are by no means a modern thing, we used to make rose petal pasta at this time of year, but whilst the dish defied my imagination it didn’t disappoint despite the lack of ravioli as I had imagined it. After 30 years of professional cooking the modern trend of mashing crumbling and including vegetables and ingredients like micro herbs that have been served on both the entrée and main is puzzling. Puzzling but not unpleasant! But, does this mean there are new rules to menu writing where repeated ingredients have always been taboo?
Courses are portioned to allow for two course plus cheese or dessert without struggling but a big eater might opt to add a single cheese $12 and go for dessert as well.
One of the greatest problems in contemporary Australian Italian dining today is that nothing, apart from perhaps the cheeses and wines, really separates it from mainstream contemporary Australian cuisine, where menus will also list gnocchi, pasta and risotto, serve sliced cured meats, olives, pickles and the like. Writing Italian titles on a menu does not necessarily make it Italian. The international borders of Australian Italian and contemporary Australian cooking are now so blurred it is almost impossible to tell the culinary roots of the restaurant without the language headings. In conclusion the food at Áuge surpassed by some distance any meal ever eaten there since Terry & Maria Soukoulis
took over the restaurant in late 2000. Áuge is firmly within Adelaide’s top 10.
WINE Wine at Áuge has always meant serious business and they are one of the very few restaurants in Adelaide to boast a sommelier. All too few South Australian restaurants understand that a sommelier doesn’t just write the wine list and control the cellar, but brings to the customers a level of wine knowledge and appreciation that general wait staff cannot be expected to deliver. A good sommelier uncovers new and interesting wines, opens interesting bottles to serve by the glass and is intimate enough with the menu and chef’s cooking to confidently recommend wines to match a dish over a broad price range. What too few restaurateurs seem to understand is that whilst delivering this improved and enjoyable wine experience the sommelier is generally upping the wine spend with the happy consent of the customer.
Wines by the glass always offer an opportunity to try something new or loved but we are finding more and more pared back by–the–glass options in Adelaide. At Áuge there are two sparking wines, one Champagne, four white and four red by the glass. NV Gosset $25, 07 Unico Wine Co ’Classico’ Sangiovese, Adelaide Hills $12, 07 Fonterutoli Chianti Classico DOCG, Tuscany, Italy $17 and the Moorooroo Park ’Earth Song’ Moscato $11 were ordered. The Gosset was superb, but the Sangiovese was well over cellar temperature and had lost its typical crushed cherry stone nose and mild spice and cherry palate. The wine was not drunk. The Chianti was a first–rate example of the style, but the surprise was the complexity and quality of the Moscato from a winery as yet unexplored by us. Fine beaded, low residual sugar with an elegant long finish it was a perfect match for the dessert but would also be a terrific aperitivo.
Owners — Terry & Maria Soukoulis
Chef — Tom Robinson
Sommelier — changing places to be advised
