The Royal Mail

The Royal Mail hotel is a reasonably comfortable hotel in a beautiful location in the Southern Grampians - a mountain range that offers much in the way of walking and wildlife spotting fun. The hotel has comfy beds, basic bathrooms and an outside pool.

This review is less about the hotel than it is about the food.

We were first attracted to the Royal Mail by Tim White's rave review in the Financial Times that claimed a meal at the restaurant was worth crossing state borders for. As we were both in Melbourne a drive back to Adelaide via Dunkeld came to seem like a sensible detour to take for two gastronomes in search of their latest hit.

Owner Allan Myers is to be congratulated on luring chef Dan Hunter back to Australia. Hunter spent two years as head chef at the acclaimed restaurant Mugaritz, close to Spain's gastro town San Sebastian (which has more Michelin stars per head of population than anywhere else in Europe and remains a favourite Red Book recommendation as a result!)

We spent a few days at the hotel working up an appetite for the degustation dinner on the Tuesday evening. The restaurant proper only operates from Tuesday to Saturday and on other evenings (and indeed on restaurant nights as well) there is a pleasant bistro that makes good use of the local produce grown in the 1500 square metres of kitchen gardens, along with the local fruit and free range eggs also available in the area.

But to the meal in question.

The decor is definitely a let down in what was otherwise a superb evening. Dan Hunter's fortunate favoured diners are seated in a semi-circular 9 table section in the same bistro as other locals dining on steak and guinness pie and chips. Apparently a revamp is being considered and I would suggest a private space with some carpet on the floor and maybe the odd superb piece of art to match the culinary creativity on display.

One plus of the unconventional set up however is that you get to watch your food being plated in the kitchen before it is rushed to your table. The intensity and focus as three or more chefs hover over the plate and add pin points of sauce and microscopic sprinklings of herbs is art in action and great to watch.

There are two 10 course tasting menus on offer at the Royal Mail, one Vegetarian and one Omnivore. Great news if you are a gastronomic vegetarian in search of a world class meal, but also great news to the omnivores among us in that you can swap a dish for a vegetarian one if there is anything you don't fancy on the omnivore list. I was nervous of the eel, beef tendon and kohl rabi dish but decided to be brave and go for the whole menu.

The sommelier offered matched wines with the Omnivore menu but as they were reisling and chardonnay heavy we opted for the odd matched wine whilst concentrating on a Louis Jadot Clos Vougeot Grand Cru 1999 Burgundy which we thought would complement the menu well.

A word to the wine lovers out there - this is one of the best wine lists in the country and repays close attention. The superb collection of over 2,000 labels, based on Allan Myers personal collection, has arguably one of the nation's best collections of Burgundy and Bordeaux. On our next visit we will study the wine list before we leave and call ahead and ask them to open our wine choice in good time. There are some truly delectable aged wines which deserve decanting and a decent airing before being drunk.

But, at last, to the food. We began with Sardine, jamon, radish and smoked bonito. The sardines were tiny and strong flavoured, decorated with a tiny sliver of radish. The accompanying bonito broth had a smoky fishy flavour and the odd speck of extremely crisp and crunchy jamon to add a textural and flavour contrast. Yum.

My personal favourite was the second course of Sugar snap pea, soured milk, spearmint, sashimi. The sugar snap peas had been podded and were served together in an artful clump. The soured milk was smeared underneath the sashimi. The italics had warned us that this may not be what it seemed, and indeed it certainly wasn't fish. At a guess we decided it might be Roma tomato skins. However on asking we were informed that Hunter had taken watermelon and slow cooked it. After which it was frozen and vacuum packed to compress it and then sliced into wafers. A tiny drop of tuna bonito was added to impart a slight fishy flavour. The taste was intense and the texture very "fishy". The contrast with the fresh crunchy peas was perfection. This was matched with a 2007 Pouilly Fumé Les Cris which was a match made in heaven.

Our next course wowed me as well and betrayed a recurring theme of textural contrast and a love of creating gritty "rubble". We were served an egg yolk with a yeast broth accompanied by crunchy toasted rye and some perfect asparagus spears. The crisp crunch of the rye and beansprouts contrasted beautifully with the unctuos egg yolk and broth.

Dan Hunter also has a liking for broths which were a trifle repetitive in this menu. Yet they worked so well it was hard to find fault. The next dish was a case in point. Pork and Prawn - the prawns in the form of cleaned and flash fried prawn heads, the pork appearing in an almost confit like melting tenderness and the whole resting on some baby leeks floating in an intense prawn tasting broth. I don't know what he did to the pork but it was a signature moment of dining bliss.

The following dish of yellowfin tuna, onions, nori and garlic was notable for the sheer beauty of its presentation (see photo) and for yet another broth!

Then it was time for the scary eel dish. Something that we both appreciated technically but not in taste terms. The beef tendons had been braised for an extremely long time until they were meltingly tender and intensely beefy - yet they still had a tendon like texture that made us both a little squeamish. The eel was extremely smoky. The gorgeous baby round potatoes were divine and almost saved the dish but not quite in our opinion.

Luckily the next dish was a perfect plate of joy which made up for all squeamish tendon related moments. Sliced perfectly rare pigeon breasts were accompanied by the most succulent tiny beetroots (testimony once again to that kitchen garden). These were served on a rubble of white chocolate and with a smear of intense pigeon flavoured wine sauce. The contrast between the sweet chocolate and the peppery, bloody tenderness of the pigeon breast was inspired. This was sexy cooking!

The first of our three puddings was a little disappointing. A simple caramelised apple with a very cheesy sauce and a grissini bread stick. It was an interesting transition dish from savoury to sweet but more of an intellectual than a taste success.

The second dessert involved rhubarb and licorice, and was certainly very pretty. My partner told me it was delicious but as I detest licorice I was given two mini creme caramels with an orange glaze on top accompanied by some beautifully sticky sweet chunks of pineapple. Where they produced this amazing dessert from at short notice was a mystery to me but I was grateful to be spared the licorice.

Our final dessert included yet another delicious "rubble" this time in the form of pistachio and honyecomb. Some dark chocolate lay across the rubble and some superb hazlenut icecream complemented the whole - not too sweet and intensely nutty.

You will need to stay at the Royal Mail to in any way appreciate the prodigious wine list and it was a joy at the end of such a superb meal to simply stagger back to our very comfortable bed.

We have been fortunate enough to eat at some fabulous restaurants all around the world and we can both quite honestly say that the Royal Mail was one of the best meals we ever had. Hats off to Dan Hunter. He is creating food history in this quiet corner of the Grampians.