The Serve - This Week: Elsternwick

The Sunday Age

Sunday May 6, 2007

Restaurant reviews by Dani Valent

4/5 Attica

74 Glen Eira Road, Ripponlea, 9530 0111

Tuesday to Thursday 6pm-10.30pm; Friday noon-2.30pm, 6-10.30pm; Saturday 9am-2.30pm, 6-10.30pm

Licensed AE DC MC V Eftpos

Entrees $5-$23; Mains $27-$37; Desserts $17-$23

Chefs are always banging on about their suppliers. Their lettuces are massaged at sunset, the eels listen to Mozart, the salt is harvested by nymphs. Attica's Ben Shewry is different. This exciting young chef talks of the wild oregano he plucks from an unkempt yard near his home and the purslane (a succulent weed) he forages locally from cobbled laneways. Of course, most of Shewry's ingredients arrive via conventional routes, but the hunter-gatherer stuff points to a geeky inventiveness that results in some of the most interesting and fine-tasting modern food you'll find in Melbourne.

When Shewry began here 21 months ago, the menu was dominated by his Thai dishes, which were authentically fragrant and punchy thanks, in part, to a stint with Aussie-Thai food guru David Thompson. There's still the odd curry, but the menu is less of a jaunt through south-east Asia and more about the evolution of Ben Shewry. The flavour-balancing ideas of Thai food - the juggle of hot, sour, salty, sweet and bitter - are in evidence, but they're now intuitively applied to dishes with European ingredients. This is very different from someone taking lemongrass, say, and bunging it on some steak, or snipping coriander over a risotto. Here, you get the complexity and nimbleness of Thai cooking, but you're as likely to be eating cheese, black pudding or tomato as tofu or lychees. It's an enriching brand of integration with no hint of cheap tokenism.

Take the vegetarian main course, consisting of a pastry-wrapped terrine of roasted Jerusalem artichoke and taleggio with pine-nut puree and a baby vegetable stew. The dish is complicated. If you care to strip it back, there's the sweetness of the slow-roasted artichokes and garlic, the bitter bite of radish, and sour notes from the grapefruit-spiked hollandaise over the stew. But if you just care to eat and enjoy, it need be nothing more than a joyous celebration of colour, flavour and texture. Typically, the dish is beautiful to look at, an elegant and expressive suite of neatly interlocking set pieces.

A dessert that counterpoints coffee icecream and white chocolate sponge with caramelised, salted hazelnuts is of a similar vein. It's luscious and sophisticated then suddenly thrillingly exotic.

Shewry is experimenting with some of the mad-science techniques proliferating in high-end restaurants here: broth was poured at the table from a test tube; jellied licorice spheres turn up in one dessert; that weedy oregano is dehydrated and blended with a caramelised salt to crust potatoes. Lest you think it's bells-and-whistles before belly, be assured that the portions are generous and you shouldn't leave hungry.

To sample dishes at the more experimental end of the spectrum, come for a Tuesday night Chef's Table dinner, when five courses cost a reasonable $60.

The 40-seat, low-key dining room has poise - all earth tones and gentle light. Service is calm, committed to the job and rightfully proud.

The restaurant is in a local shopping strip that's cute during the day but dead at night, meaning a visit to Attica can feel a bit like foraging in a laneway. But, just as Shewry emerges from his expeditions with a handful of useful herbs, your journey is likely to be successful, too.

Tips and pans to theserve@theage.com.au

ALSO try

Bala Da Dhaba, 56 Glen Eira Road, Ripponlea, 9523 8683. Tuesday to Sunday, 5.30pm-11pm

Not much changes here: the dhal is always creamy, the baigan aloo features reliably mushy eggplant and the dhaba mixed grill is a succulent mix of tandoor-cooked lamb chops, chicken pieces and mushroom. Think down-at-heel curry house rather than Raj ra-ra.

Meze, 250 Glen Eira Road, Elsternwick, 9523 2166. Monday to Saturday, 5pm-10pm

Pizzas are wood-fired in a terracotta inferno and come with traditional Turkish toppings such as spicy sucuk sausage, ground beef, fetta and egg.

Home-made starters include hummus and a garlicky spinach dip with yoghurt.

Lamzinis 2, 272 Glen Eira Road, Elsternwick, 9532 7385. Sunday to Thursday, noon-2pm, 5pm-9.30pm

A Kosher Chinese takeaway that also serves risotto? Sure, why not. A basic cafe fit-out allows for no-fuss dining. Go spicy with Szechuan beef and stir-fried noodles or keep things kid-friendly with sweet-and-sour chicken and the range of satays.

© 2007 The Sunday Age

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