Viva rating: * * * * *
Where: St Patrick's Square, Wyndham St, CBD
Ph:(09) 368 4129
Open: Lunch Mon-Fri, Dinner Mon-Sat
Vegetarian: Options plus degustation menu
Wine list: Top shelf
Cuisine: Modern NZ
From the menu: Beef carpaccio, prawn escabeche, coconut gelee $22, Milk-fed veal loin, Israeli couscous, escargot, maple $37, Almond financier, passionfruit, rhubarb, blueberry $16.
KEY POINTS:
Bread and butter. Bangers and mash. Roast beef and Yorkshire pud - some things just go together. Like ostrich fillet, chocolate soil, haloumi and chorizo!
Not the sort of thing you find on your average restaurant menu. It sounds like the kind of dish that makes people look at flash restaurants and say, "Give me real food. Good, plain cooking that we can eat, not pretentious muck. What's sumac, anyway?"
But the Grove is not your average restaurant. And Sid Sahrawat is far, far from being your - or anyone else's - average chef.
Sahrawat has been at The Grove for over a year, having replaced Michael Meredith. That was not a hard act to follow: just a damn-near impossible one. Unless you are the Lewisham Award-ed innovative chef of 2006, about to become the 2007 Lewisham Award-ed outstanding chef of 2007.
But - please excuse me - my entrée is in danger of getting cold. On one elongated plate, it encapsulates the chef's style, execution, presentation and edge. Four seemingly unrelated textures and flavours: discs of lean meat, outside seared and inner pink; bland cheese; spicy and oozing sausage; on a bed of rich, grated chocolate.
It shouldn't work. It should be a miscegenation of unrelated ingredients. It isn't. Each forkful awakens a different sense in the mouth and activates a reaction ... oh, somewhere else.
Sahrawat's menu, any meal from it, is not so much a dinner as a work of art. There are the tastes, but so much more than that. He's a modernist but not a futurist; less a devotee of fashion than a respecter of textures, shapes, colours and technique. He uses the plate as a palette, and the palate as a planet to be explored.
Jude began with goat's curd tortellini, a smash-bang-wallop of flavours that included fresh peas and beetroot and two or three other things that weren't mentioned on the menu.
To duck breast. Sahrawat serves it cubed, partnered with caramelised pork ("the most perfectly cooked pork I've ever tasted," she declared), miso, parsnip and apple. Drizzle of pureed this. Miniature pickled that. Light and piquant sauce of other things.
Rather than spelling out every ingredient ("the salt comes from a pond on an islet on the south side of a west-facing lagoon ... "), Sahrawat notes the essentials on his menu then spices the dish with extras.
I chose "lamb loin, garlic ravioli, pumpkin and chermoula". They were all present and more than correct. So was a chump of expertly slow-cooked shoulder under the pasta, dashes of herbs and splashes of sauce to enhance the base flavours.
Sahrawat has an outstanding understanding of vegetables. The Grove may be the only restaurant offering a nine-course degustation menu for those eschewing meat.
He plays with modern techniques in the last round: foam fizzed over my rum and raisin parfait (okay, icecream); Jude freed little hostages of gellified beetroot into her chocolate mousse and honey panna cotta. Yes, beetroot and chocolate on the same plate. We are back at the first paragraph.
The best thing about Sid Sahrawat and his food may be that they're on the right stage. He has encouragement and foil in The Grove's owners, Michael and Annette Dearth.
Michael appears the quintessential San Franciscan: laid-back and nonchalant. This masks a professional performing the ultimate trick for a restaurant. He and his staff look casual and effortless in-front, thanks to hours of efficiency and perfectionism out-back.
I suspect the Dearths and Sahrawat share a similar ethos, sense of humour, and liking for surprises. Ask the host to select a wine for the ostrich entrée and he's likely to produce an Aussie sparkling shiraz. For the lamb you're likely to get a dead hippie ex-surfer's Old Wave zinfandel from California.
Everything about this restaurant is edgy, fun and extremely serious. Worth every one of those 5 stars.
