Chevre involtini, a quartet of bright red rolls around a piece of eggplant and soft goat's curd toped with a dried fig and olive tapenade. Picture: GRANT NOWELL Source: The Advertiser
A NORWOOD corner pub gets the beer, wine and food mix just right.
Get this: We're in a fairly standard-looking suburban pub, the last watering hole before the city as you head down The Parade.
The piped music is a cool set of Dylan - Subterranean Homesick Blues - then jazzy tones and Gracelandish Paul Simon, and the chandelier above the main front bar has iced over, literally. They're pouring about 30 great Australian beers, only Australian, family-run, mostly, funky and flavoursome, from tap and bottle. The barman hands one over and says: "Too easy."
This lunch order seems a little weird for a suburban pub, perhaps, encouraged by the menu's tapas section: a distinctive rectangular plate with berserkly coloured rolled capsicum pieces - chevre involtini.
On another huge square plate, there's a mound of salt and pepper fried gear. Wait. Look at me. It's tofu. Not squid. That would be way too normal.
When the barman takes the order, he looks quizzical. "OK, then. Go your hardest with that," he says.
In a glass beside the dishes, there's a vibrant purple tide of Bodegas Carchelo Monastrell Syrah Cabernet blend from Jumilla, Spain. It's on the wine list at $8.90 a pour.
You could be a thousand miles away but for the Coopers taps at the bar. And the fascinating historic Aussie bushland friezes uncovered on the distressed walls.
This is Norwood's Colonist Tavern. It's been through a few renovations since it went up in 1851, the latest, under the ownership of the Saturno Hotel group, coming up with a distinct inner-city Melbourne urban grunge kind of feel in the bars, including lounge area.
Walk a little inside the hotel and the contrast is astounding, the dining room lifted by artsy Sandra Anderson hand-painted mural walls in a tribute to art-nouveau and gold-leaf guru Gustav Klimt.
Together with a range of antique varnished tables, soft, old clubby chairs and corner lampshades, the room is one of the most interesting eat-in spaces in Adelaide.
In the end, however, you are still in a hotel, so the menu is in large laminated form in the bar and dining room.
And that's where most pubs would throw up their hands and fall for the easy-over kitchen treatment hereon. Not here. David White has found an excellent spot to balance his chef concepts with hotel perceptions. Yep, there are bowls of chips, and garlic bread, though some start-up dishes reveal White's lean to Mediterranean and the more fashionable Iberian cuisines. One has shavings of Spanish jamon. And a tapas of smoked cod and manchego croquettes?
Really. Whatever happened to schnitters?
Well, they're here too under "Pub Classics", but how salt and pepper tofu gets to share that sub-head is quite some leap. It's understood the regular squid crowds included vegetarians and the tofu was served as their option, eventually becoming so popular it earned a place in its own right. Bravo.
That chevre involtini, by the way, also fits into the tapas selection, as well as a bowl of whitebait. The first is a very smart little quartet of bright red rolls around a piece of eggplant and soft goat's curd topped with a dried fig and olive tapenade. Some pub dish. There are smart modish restaurants around town who would love to serve such treats with the same panache.
The whitebait are tiny little fish, lightly floured and fried crispy. Mild to the taste, they are offset with a roasted garlic aioli that understands the meaning of subtle. A good little share plate.
The classics menu does a good line in chef's twists on dishes we know and love. Sausages are wagyu, lamb burger is dosed with chermoula. The tofu are wide, thinnish slabs over chips, but there is a hint in their flavour profile that they have been fried in oil that may have seen the oceanic ingredients from the menu.
Then there's a bunch of meals called "chef dishes" instead of "mains", with steaks and mixed grills and a penne and beef cheek ragu, as well as a jungle curry of goat. A blue swimmer crab linguine with a rose sauce is well put together, with the meat all picked, fresh and convenient. A duck confit over lyonnaise potatoes also performs well, its sweet sherry sauce lifting the slow braised duck with crispy skin to higher interest.
Such dishes cry out for more than a few boutique Aussie beers, and here the Colonist is quite a high achiever with the kind of list that puts many restaurants to shame, including French, Italian, Spanish and New Zealand imports, many of them by the glass.
Even the dessert and fortified wines are generously broad in style and region, a Spanish Pedro Ximenez pairing well with a creme brulee that's spot-on, lightly creamy, showing proper vanilla seeds and served at a considered cool temperature, rather than vilely cold as often occurs.
Also on the cards to finish here is another twist on the trad, a "gooey fig pudding" rather than "sticky date", working those caramel brown discs of imported figs into a defined flavour, soft, warming and drenched in good sweet sauce.
These are fine finishing touches to arguably one of the smartest pub dining rooms in Adelaide. The cooking is top-shelf, the feel of the pub is intelligent and creative, yet it remains peculiarly a quintessential corner Aussie drinking hole.
To cap it off, the barmen farewells us: "Have a good one."
At the Colonist, no worries.
THE RESTAURANT
COLONIST TAVERN
44 The Parade, Norwood.
Phone 8362 3736.
www.colonist.com.au
Breakfast: 9am-1pm, Sat-Sun.
Lunch: Noon-2.30pm, seven days.
Dinner: 6pm-9pm, seven days.
Small functions available.
Wheelchair access and facilities.
Owner: Saturno Hotel Group.
Chef: David White.
THE VERDICT
THE BILL
Entrees: $9-$16.
Mains: $15.50-$34.90.
Desserts: $8-$10.
Corkage: $10/bottle.
SUMMARY
An inner-city-style pub with design and gastronomy at its heart, a great Australian beer list, inventive wine choices and smart, modern cooking beyond the call of hotel duties.
SCORE 15/20
Score guide: Below 10: Awful. 11-12: Fair. 13-14: Good. 15-16: Special. 17-18: Outstanding.
19: Brilliant. 20: Perfect.
