It was interesting to note that three of Tasmania’s top ten restaurants, according to the Australian Gourmet Traveller’s most recent restaurant guide, were set in vineyards – Meadowbank, Daniel Alps at Strathlyn and Moorilla’s The Source.
And there’s little doubt that the lovely gardens, the magnificent old trees and the view across the lake to a hillside of vines adds immeasurably to the pleasure of eating and drinking your way through a lazy lunch on the balcony or at the garden tables at Joe Chromy’s cellar door. Even on a day with mist on the water and rain pelting down, the atmosphere of the historic building housing the café is one of cosy and cosseted relaxation that enourages the enjoyment of good food and wine.
The food is fine, the wines are even better with winemaker Jeremy Dineen nominated a finalist in this year’s national Young Winemaker of the Year.
The current winter menu – shortly to change – runs the gourmet platter, frittata, pasta, risotto, home-made pie and Caesar salad café mainstream with mussels in a tomato and fennel broth among the entrees and chicken, blue eye on Parmesan gnocchi and King Island porterhouse on the mains.
A beef and onion pie was a proper pie, the flavoursome, juicy and tender meat fully enclosed in good, crisp pastry. An open duck lasagne was somewhat less successful, the essentially dry tastelessness of confit duck unrelieved by pallid diced tomato and a trendy cauliflower puree. And a chicken Caesar was well composed and pleasingly dressed.
With excellent wines and the food seasoned by the view, it was no surprise to find the café fully booked and buzzing as the sun broke through the rain clouds on a recent Sunday morning.
