Core Promises Don't Deliver

The Age

Tuesday September 19, 2006

John Lethlean

RESTAURANT REVIEW: B.coz, East Hawthorn

Take away the fancy wording and this is an expensive restaurant with unimaginative food, out of step with what's going on in the better restaurants of Australia.11 /20

HERE'S an exercise. Write this down on a piece of paper and ask someone who eats out a bit what the wording means to them. I tried it. I emailed my editors and simply asked: "Please tell me what you'd expect of a dish described on a menu thus: 'Organic roasted duck & warm spiced orange parcel, asian style bok choy, ginger salad, orange glaze.' "

Both emailed back straightaway. One expected a parcel with duck in it; the other, duck with a parcel. Neither knew I was asking about a $36 main course, which, you'd agree, heavily colours the way this information is read and processed.

You'd never expect roast duck with some kind of "parcel" as an entree; but for $36, which is almost exactly what a lot of smart city restaurants would charge for a main involving a breast of duck roasted, maybe accompanied by a parcel of leg meat, well, you can see where I'm going with this, can't you?

As with subjects taking a Rorschach test, I saw one thing, someone else saw another. Only I had the advantage of context, which might just be my way of justifying what was obviously a screw-up. I read it, thought I understood it well enough, and didn't think to ask the waiter for any further explanation, which is why I was a little surprised when my $36 duck pastie came to lunch the other day.

I'd been thinking about a piece of juicy, fragrant roast duck when this pastry parcel arrived, sort of crimped down the middle like the frankly amateurish pasties I used to make on the odd occasion I helped out in the kitchen back in the pastry business I was briefly involved in. I felt like ordering a pint and talking like a Cornishman, which is not so far from the truth (given my surname).

Rhetoric and expectation. And B.coz is a restaurant where rhetoric and expectation are to the fore.

Says chef/proprietor Rod Barbey in the introduction to his menu: "My food has evolved over the past 24 years of professional cooking, into what I call Australasian Organic. My cooking style is a blend of all of the flavours that excite me, fresh, health driven ingredients, mixed together to taste good and be good for you, in an intimate, sophisticated environment." So here is a modern-looking brasserie big on organic produce, the biggest development since I last ate here maybe seven years ago; there are separate menus for those who don't eat animals, those with lactose problems and those who are gluten-challenged.

But you know what? The food we had was not much good. And it's expensive. I didn't enjoy eating it and didn't feel any better - physiologically or psychologically - when I got home, so to my way of thinking, the restaurant fails on its core promises.

At each step, ideas and promise seem to get ahead of reality. For example, there's a mini loaf of house-baked bread, but it's soft and unexciting. There's a choice of two butters - one herbed, one not - but is that necessary, or better than simply one?

We stick to the menu proper, a document offering eight choices in each bracket, plus sides. An entree of sauteed cured flathead tails ($20) sounds interesting: in fact, the fish has a faintly unpleasant whiff about it; firm pieces of warm, slightly browned fillet on a mound of lentil and tomato salad, a few bits of green leaf and, around the plate, a light "organic lime plum dressing". The "organic fennel" in the salad has almost zero impact on its texture and flavours.

The next entree ($18) consists of three golden fritters made from cauliflower, Emmental and egg. They sit on a salad of "braised beetroot", pumpkin seeds and udon - all vividly coloured by the beetroot - the perimeter of the plate irrigated with a "ruby grapefruit dressing" that is in fact a clear brown liquid that nonetheless provides citrus/acidic relief to the soft, fried nature of the dish's hero. There's a bit of pickled julienne veg on top. It's an original dish.

The parcel. Well, you've read the description. I guess what surprised most was how little duck is actually inside the pastry for a $36 main course, and the fact that the steaming inside the parcel as the pastry was baked produced small pieces of meat that shouldn't really be called "roasted". It was more like braised duck with bok choy and sympathetic orange zesty flavours; the pastry was light and definitely homemade, yet slightly soggy on the inside. It sits on a lively little crunchy salad with ginger, a very good orange glaze beneath it all.

However it's worded, it would be a pleasant bistro main, at about the $22 mark. But $36? If that's the cost of organic produce, I've got to ask: why bother, when the pleasure from eating it is so far behind every other $36 (and cheaper) duck dish I've eaten this year?

The other main is messy on the plate, essentially a pad of yellow mash (sweet potato and pumpkin, organic of course), a layer of leaves and a few pieces of lamb fillet, pan-fried with fairly coarse spices, intended to convey some kind of Cajun character. There's a brown sauce full of black speckles (spice from the pan frying?) and blobs of sweet chilli jelly. It's also $36.

The meat is tender.

We push on to desserts ($14); both come with simply excellent ice-cream. For the first - a very sweet (although our waiter did warn us of this) stewed apple and quince crumble, pureed to death and the consistency of baby food - it's a nutmeg and sultana ice of great purity and texture. The plate is streaked with a vivid berry coulis.

The second is a white chocolate blueberry ripple ice-cream of similar virtue to its sibling. It, too, has berry coulis on the plate - graduated "dots" - and icing sugar. But the eating hero - the mousse - is like eating a stick of butter, notwithstanding the refined flavour of the chocolate employed. One mouthful is too much. Nearly all fat. The mousse is crowned by an offset rectangular card of white chocolate. Fat on fat.

Our waiter is eager and saccharine sweet, to a fault. Possibly a reflection of the prices, the restaurant does six covers over Thursday lunch. An appalling version of This Guy's in Love with You by some throaty cabaret chanteuse sums up the soundtrack to lunch at B.coz. I ordered a terrific glass of wine listed as Torbreck/b.coz shiraz mataro at $15 from a limited choice - more than 600 bottles are on the list, but only eight still table wines can be had by the glass.

The three-course lunch with tap water, two wines and two different teas costs $184, pre tip.

B.coz seems so enamoured of the organics thing, and branding/identity/design, as to have put cooking and - importantly - benchmarking against restaurants in the same price range, on the backburner. If ever the hand-adzed, old-growth timber cart has gotten before the organically reared donkey, this is it.

If this is one of Australia's few organically certified fine-dining restaurants, I'd rather take my chances with the chemicals.

Where: 403 Riversdale Road, Hawthorn East, 9882 7889

Food: Modern

Cost: Typical small dish $18, typical main $34

Wine list: Vast, with wide selection of organic wines

Corkage: n/a

We drank: Torbreck/b.coz shiraz mataro (Barossa Valley, South Australia) $15 a glass

Service: Pleasant enough

Value: Poor

Owners: Rodney and Neville Barbey

Chef: Rodney Barbey

Vegetarian: Separate menu (as there is for gluten-free and lactose-free)

Outdoors: No

Wheelchairs: Yes

Parking: Street

Cards: AE BC DC MC V

Hours: Wed-Fri midday-2.30pm; Wed-Sat 6pm-9.30pm

Web: bcoz.com.au

Score: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.

© 2006 The Age

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