Brent's: My First Degustation Experience

Wow I seem to be having a lot of firsts lately hehe! The other day my beautiful friend Joanna introduced me to the wonderful world of degustation! I've always been a bit hesitant in trying degustations because I thought I'd never be able to finish them or else I'd be super bloated! Surprisingly, I finished practically every delicious dish and didn't feel like I was in a food coma afterwards. We ate for 3.5 hours!!

 

We started off with two appetizers, the Amuse Bouche and Wild mushroom cappuccino with truffle oil and prosciutto crumbs. I absolutely loved the wild mushroom cappuccino, it's essentially a mushroom soup but it was so delicious and great on a cold night. I only wish it came in a bigger cup!

Then came the entrees, the Crumbed & fried goats cheese, beetroot & sorbet, candied pecan & charcoal lavosh and Red claw yabby, citrus cured salmon, cucumber, melon & mandarin jam. Both were delicious, the beetroot sorbet would help cut through the richness of the goats cheese. The yabby was a bit small but I guess that's all you can expect for an entree.

We had a bit of a refresher which was Chartreuse marshmallow, compressed apple, cucumber snow & milk wafer so it would cleanse the palette. Ok, I admit, I didn't like this, the flavours and textures were all just a bit weird for me but it was refreshing.

Mains were Crispy confit duck, butternut pumpkin, lemon curd & liquorice wafer and Slow cooked beef cheek, paris mash, sautéed mushroom, prosciutto & garlic croutons. I loved both of these but if I were to pick one, it'll have to be the duck. It was just so crispy and the lemon curd went perfectly with it. The beef cheeks were so soft that it would pretty much just melt apart, although the dish as a whole was a bit too salty, it would have been nice if there wasn't so much salt in the mash because the flavours of the beef were already quite strong.

 

We then had a Cheese course of the day which was then followed by dessert which was Coffee & fennel seed ice cream with chocolate mud cake and ganche. Unfortunately, the cheese of the day was blue cheese which neither of us are a big fan of. I had a few nibbles on the blue cheese and it wasn't too bad, not the worst of the blue cheeses I've tried. The dessert was was nice, the flavours of the ice cream were interesting, although I didn't like the ganche so much, it tasted like it was burnt.

The atmosphere inside Brent's was very relaxed but it still had the fine dining feel to it. It wasn't one of those places where you felt like you had to whisper to the person next to you and act extremely proper. The staff were all very friendly, polite and informative about the food which I think was great otherwise I wouldn't have a clue as to what I was eating. Brent's is another restaurant I would be happy to return to!

Overall, I enjoyed my first degustation experience and would definitely love to do it all again! So if you know of any good places to try, please leave a comment below.

Thank you!!

Joanne :)