Dining at places like The Farmed Table make me want to quit my job and food blog full-time.
No, seriously. This was one of the best meals I’ve had in the last few months and I’m so excited to share it with you all.
The Farmed Table is a pop-up restaurant, to be found in various locations each Saturday evening. (Have a look on their Facebook page to see where they are next!). I absolutely love the concept:
Each week we will envisage to put together a different menu, based on produce which is at its best whilst always dealing directly with the farmers themselves to ensure the greatest understanding of how our produce has come to be at The Farmed Table.
Produce will all be sourced from a particular region…Entirely all of the produce (except salt and pepper) will be grown, nurtured or caught from within a 30km radius of each other, showcasing the best that region has to offer.
For our meal, we enjoyed food from the Shoalhaven region in New South Wales.
I just love how fresh the produce is, that it is sustainable (a lot of it is foraged) and that relationships between the chef and local farmers lead directly to the food on my plate.
I’ve posted the photos in order to demonstrate exactly what we ate. The first to plates were to share (in a group of 4 we got 2 of each, so there was plenty to go around):
Spring onion soubise, baby brussel sprouts, charred broccoli – simply could not get enough of these brussel sprouts. Phenomenal.
Salad of roasted carrots, labne, nasturtium & Yarrawa pecans – amazing warm salad that was perfect for a windy, wintry day. I love having nuts in my meal. The dish even looks like it’s just been foraged off the ground!
Our mains and dessert (we each got all of these dishes):
Grilled Shoalhaven river garfish, leek, tangello + foraged Minamurra sea plants – I had never even heard of garfish, let alone eaten it. The small fish (about 15cm long) have very tender meat but a helluva lot of bones. Like, so many. So many that you just give up and eat them and hope they don’t get stuck in your tonsil (this has happened to me before) but instead give you good calcium nutritional benefits. The leek and tangello combo was a great accompaniment to the fish, and the sea plants are really fun! It’s kind of like eating seaweed, but with a chewier texture.
Naturally grass fed Schottlanders Wagyu (36 months), wild weeds, cauliflower + Foxground stinging nettle – I’ve never had an experience with stinging nettle in the wild, but I hear it’s painful. Thankfully it is not painful when it has been cooked. I think it’s really cool that plants we would normally consider as weeds can actually have great nutritional benefit to us – how are we not tapping into this more? I feel like we each got several different cuts of beef on our plate which was a real treat. Amazing, tender meat that was just a joy to eat.
Rhubarb, orange, lavender cream + wood sorrel – who said desserts had to be heavy and overly sweet? This lavender cream was a dream. So, so light, it worked so well with the stewed rhubarb and orange to give us the loveliest ending to our meal. Even DS, who doesn’t like dessert, absolutely loved it. It almost acts like a palate cleanser, but I would also call it a ‘polite’ dessert – it isn’t so overpowering that it makes you forget the other great dishes you just ate, but it is unique enough to make you go, oh wow! You’re pretty great too!
All of that for a mere $55 (or $80 with matching wines). I think it’s a real bargain and such a treat for really very, very good food. Oh and the portion sizes are very generous too. Chef Brendan Cato came out at the end of our meal to meet us as well, and it was an opportunity to ask him more about his ingredients. It’s a meal where you literally know where everything came from, which is really great.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that you will be eating the same thing that we had considering the menu changes weekly. But I can guarantee it will be fresh, exciting, slightly unusual, a little adventurous and very enjoyable.
The Farmed Table
Various locations around Sydney
See https://www.facebook.com/thefarmedtable for more info