Send to a friend

Print

del.icio.us this

Digg this

Courgette

One of Canberra’s most corporate restaurants, Courgette ticks all the expense-account boxes, with its boardroom décor and sumptuous cab- and shiraz-heavy wine list. The food is teased, twirled, moulded, pressed, reduced, moussed and puréed. Quail is perfectly lovely roasted – why complicate it with a dull raviolo and a fiddly ballottine? There’s care in the execution of roast lamb loin, juicy and pink, but the Saint Agur blue cheese, candied endive tart and ‘courgette galette’ may leave you scratching your head. Similarly, desserts would be leaps and bounds better if produce were foregrounded rather than artifice. There’s some good cooking here, but some of these ideas seem less than fresh, and it might be time the kitchen worked smarter, not harder, and spends less time making little squiggles of sauce on the plate and more time paying attention to what’s in the middle of it.