fino
8 Hill Street
Willunga, South Australia 5172
Right next to the Alma Hotel
W Not available
E info@fino.net.au
T +61 8 8556 4488
F +61 8 8556 4090
OPEN Lunch Tuesday to Saturday, breakfast Saturdays only, dinner Friday and Saturday from 6.30 pm, open Sundays long weekends
2009 review July 24
FOOD Gorgeous! What a lovely few weeks giving my favourite South Australian restaurants their annual review! Five entrees, three mains, three desserts and a couple of specials, what more do you need if they are all terrific? Absolutely nothing! Add a fab wine list (more about that later) and a room that is lit with sunlight and spotlessly clean, even a bit of a garden out the back with herbs, artichokes and a good crop of broad beans coming along. It was especially poignant to see the beautiful still life paintings of the late Bridgette Ohlsson again. Her exquisite work seems to have a sense of home coming on the walls of Fino and so appropriately in a restaurant that she would have loved and in a region dear to her.
Since we last ate at Fino the format has changed to something a little more conventional, but for those who adored their previous format “small plates of the chef’s choice” a generous five course shared menu for $55 per person remains. Food and wine prices are very modest in fact well below some of the terrible tricked up Adelaide metro pubs where there is no service and no decent food to be found. Their most expensive entrée is $20 for six great big scrumptious South Australian prawns cooked in good oil with just the right balance of garlic, lemon and chilli and main $32 for aged Coorong Angus scotch fillet. Initially it was a disappointment that chef owner David Swain wasn’t cooking but we know him well enough to understand if he couldn’t safely leave someone else in charge he wouldn’t. Apprentice Mo Czulowski and kitchen hand Anna Simecek were not pressed with numbers and had we not been able to see Swain’s absence we would have been none the wiser, we had a terrific lunch.
Good bread from the old Mayland’s pub family, the Clappis, now ensconced in the region at “my place” where they are doing special events with their usual panache and making gorgeous bread for all who care. Add to that a very nice olive oil from the McLaren Vale Diana Olive Oil. The philosophy behind Fino when it comes to food is to support the best of the region’s producers and being right next to the Willunga Farmer’s Market they have ample first access to the best of the produce.
My companion had the prawns and took a ribbing for not sucking out the heads that are almost better than the prawns but it is a common practice in the Western world to leave them untouched on the plate. Six decent sixed prawns, simply cooked the food margins must be way out if it is a popular dish. Sometimes when I see the heads in plates I feel like asking could I have them but know that polite etiquette silences that request. I am surprised more chefs don’t remove the heads and make another dish with them rather than see them end up in the bin. My entrée salad of olive oil braised giant octopus, witlof, frise, fennel and kipfler potatoes was heavy on the greens, especially the outer frise leaves but the octopus was masterful, soft tender and succulent and in no way masked by the dishes’ other ingredients. More potato and less greens would accentuate the splendour of the octopus without adding to the cost of the dish. For mains crispy skin duck breast, beetroot, French lentils and broccolini $28 was art on a plate and my companion, who eats no fat, kindly passed the perfectly crisped skin to me. The duck could have been rested meat side down for another ten minutes to allow the very rare strip to set to a tender medium rare but it was a perfectly wonderful combination and a very generously sized portion. Wild rabbit is the test of any chef and Swain’s rabbit dish is intelligent cooking with a lot of work on the plate given it is simply listed as wild Coorong rabbit with Baccalaro sausage, poached loin and confit rabbit salad with braised leeks $29 was a stunner. The sliced and fried house-made sausage was intensified with fennel seed and decadent with pine nuts. The confit rabbit salad was laden with exotic mushrooms and the braised leek embellished with a few slices of perfectly cooked loin. It was utterly gorgeous.
By this time we have stuffed all the food, all the bread and oil and feigning “eloquency of sufficiency” we shared a dessert from three very tempting choices. Quince and almond tart with vanilla bean ice cream, vanilla bean and brandy snap terrine with Belgium chocolate, pear tarte tatin with walnut cream and of course cheese selection (not even a consideration for two dessert lovers). We both had to admit that half of their pear tart tatin was a mistake, in fact for a few seconds I considered securing my friends hand to the table with my dessert fork so I could scoff the lot. It was bloody gorgeous and coffees were terrific. There is one thing about coffee in Adelaide I just don’t get and that is brown sugar, which utterly transforms the taste of the coffee. Pure nit picking! Fino is the type of restaurant that anyone with half a palate should be out supporting. It drives me nuts to see bad restaurants packed to the gills whilst good restaurants, those restaurants who take their craft seriously and deliver well above the modest prices they charge struggle through the winter months. They have recently added a wine room that comfortably seats ten. The idea of finding ten lushes to lay some decent money on the table and allow Swain to design a menu and Romeo to choose the wines is something we hope to experience in the very near future. Swain and Romeo have proved themselves to be a formidable team and I am very proud to say David was my first trainee at Mistress Augustine’s.
WINE Sharon Romeo writes a neat list picking the eyes from the McLaren Vale region and standing them against some excellent old world comparisons. The complexity and balance of the Fino list is exceptional and the price range for the quality of the offering very seductive. What we particularly like about Romeo’s wine list is that she never succumbs to fashion. She actively seeks out quality and interest and wines are priced to encourage the drinker to try something different. Cleverly she opens more expensive wines to sell by the glass and doesn’t ramp up the price with the end result that the diner, coerced to try a glass of something different is often tempted to buy a bottle. Fino is a regional jewel!
To see David Swain make his duck dish click here
For details about Diana Olive Oil click here
