Nelson Bay and Ritual

Four of my friends and I rented a house in Fingal Bay, near Nelson Bay at Port Stephens this weekend. It was $400. It took 4 hours to drive there on a Friday evening, counting a Maccas stop at Wyong on the F3 and getting out of the Sydney traffic.

The Saturday was Sydney's hottest day on record, so we managed to avoid that and spend it on the beach at Fingal Bay. We spent a couple of hours walking all around the bay, mostly in the water and playing with lots of hermit crabs. I love the sea wildlife and hope it doesn't disappear. It's a beautiful bay with quite white sands, whiter than Sydney, but not as white as Jervis Bay.

For dinner we managed to get a table at Ritual Restaurant. It is a molecular gastronomy restaurant, and it was a lot of fun. We started with a garlic fairy floss on a rosemary stalk. There were numerous small items to taste from collecting spoons off the wall, as well as three main courses. The dinner was based on the Dorothea MacKellar's poem 'My country'. To select each main course, they gave you two spoonfuls of flavour to taste and depending on which spoon you like, that is the main course you get. Some examples of tastes: strawberrry spritz, strawberry sheeshah, pork crackling and plum, blue cheese. Tom yum soup encased in an egg shaped gel with a prawn inside. I had parsley sorbet as a palate cleanser, and the after dinner mint was a frozen scoop of sorbet.

We shared our courses so we could try both of them they had on offer. The entree was pork with cherry, with eel crackers, chocolate sauce and smoked eel on a cracker. The other one was kingfish with different tempura coatings, with different fish roe in circles around the plate. The main was rabbit roulade with root vegetables which was very tasty. The other main was a stuffed lamb chop, a strip of lamb, organic lentils with finely chopped mushroom - again very tasty. For dessert, my flavours were harissa, cardamon and rhubarb. There were a few flavoured 'gels' ie agar jelly, and some biscuits, creamy stuff. The other dessert looked spectacular! A lolly pop coated in coconut. A

I haven't had matched wines before with a meal. I didn't get much of a sense of how they matched the wine, but definitely enjoyed trying new wines. This was a really fun experience, and really, what is better than sitting around for 5 hours eating and drinking with friends? We spoke to the chef and he told us his wife who is scientist encouraged him to cook in this creating style, and will experiment with engaging mores senses in the future. The restaurant sits 16 people - very labour intensive. Initially the restaurant was a risk venture. I was inspired, in future I won't be afraid of trying new flavour combinations in future, if only 2 or 3 flavours.