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Montana Wines, Brancott Winery, Marlborough New Zealand
Submitted by m on Wed, 08/02/2006 - 09:53.
Brancott Winery, Marlborough New Zealand
64 3 577 5775
The people we were with had always wanted to eat here, so had booked a table for the four of us. Montana is trying to emulate the swish wineries of Napa Valley, and the restaurant certainly looked promising. Three of us chose hot smoked salmon with noodles; G went for the beef burger. L had his eye on that, but old habits die hard and even in BSE free New Zealand he couldn't bring himself to order minced beef. Service in New Zealand is leisurely by London standards, but even so, we did wait a very long time for our food. Irritatingly, G's beef burger turned out to be a tender beef steak, it was called a burger because it came in a bun. The hot smoked salmon was - as you'd expect - salty, but the bed of noodles on which it perched were drenched in soy sauce. So you got two intensely salty things, which did not compliment each other at all. The noodles had pine nuts and diced aubergine in with them, both subtle flavours completely swamped by the soy. The salmon was crowned with little slices of melted brie. The waiter warned us the plates were hot, they must have been standing on a hot plate for a long time because the noodles, while slightly underdone, were all stuck together in the middle. Fortunately, not too many chefs achieve crunchy yet soggy noodles - didn't finish mine. They were obviously aiming for Fusion, this trend started down under, and has been successful worldwide. Done properly, the innovative mix of South East Asian, Mediterranean and Californian ingredients and cooking styles is truly awesome. But this was Fusion by Numbers: something from each culture with no thought of balancing flavours. It was a con. Con Fusion. Geddit? Avoid this pretentious place. 2001 DM
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