<-Back to reviews
Graeme Phillips - 'Savour' The Mercury
Presentation, garnishings, saucing, flavours and composition are all things
we look at and for when dining out. But apart from when the steak is tough
or your fork can’t spear the spud, how often do we really look at
the basics – the cooking? It’s a big call, but the food at
Restaurant 373 in among the best-cooked food in the state. From the shortcrust
pastry of a wonderful Persian fetta tart to meltingly tender braised lamb
with not even a suggestion of stringyness. From the verdant green, perfectly
puffed out crisp sugar snap peas to the properly crisped skin of moist
nuggets of blue eye.
Few other chefs are cooking as well and none are cooking better.
And the only disappointment, failure in fact, of two recent meals was
something that didn’t require cooking – oysters five ways,
a menu item best avoided until changed.
Restaurant 373 is on the site where Lickerish brought style and manna
heaven to the North Hobart strip before being replaced by the unlamented
Black Pepper Pizza.
Style is back, good wines and service are back and the signs are good
that 373 is here to stay.
Fabian Christoph and his working partners, Narelle Monks and Jay Patey,
are all young, talented and, despite their youth, bring wide European
experience to their first restaurant venture. Christoph trained at the
Beach Café in Cornwall under Michael Smith, who can currently be
seen working his pans on the Discovery Channel.
The menu is mostly composed of classic combinations and dishes with occasional
small, individual touches – little things on the previous menu like
then truffled egg that lifted and gave a new twist to aged beef carpaccio;
such delicious combinations as mushrooms, orange, thyme and mascarpone
risotto; and a thick, creamy celeriac soup unusually partnered with tea-smoked
trout.
