Seeking Three, One, Two

by RICHARD JONES

VOTED Melbourne's top new restaurant for 2006 by The Age Good Food Guide Carlton's Three, One, Two provides a sumptuous degustation menu over summer weekends.

Andrew McConnell (the 2006 Age Chef of the Year) and his dedicated team have transformed the former Mrs Jones restaurant in Drummond Street into Victorias most sought after eating establishment.

And in-house sommelier Adam Foster has embarked upon extensive research to match sherries and wines to the dishes on the degustation list.

We were still downing our pre-dinner champagnes when the first dish arrived. Called simply cigars and placed on their own Romeo y Julieta cigar box, the cigars are made of Tunisian brik pastry filled with fromage blanc and an olive and fig tapenade. Delicious.

Sherries, you ask? On a menu based on modern Australian cuisine in the early 21st century?

Well, the dry Spanish sherry matched the chilled almond milk soup with Pedro Ximenex jelly perfectly. The sherry was Delgado La Goya Manzanilla sherry.

Then it was onto the kingfish, crab and cuttlefish salad with a 2003 Grandbazan amber Albarion, also from Spain. But for those in our party who were allergic to crustaceans, and for the vegetarians anyway, the alternative dish was the fried five-spiced silken tofu, celery, coriander and cashew salad.

Next came the quail pastille with prune vinegar and lentils. We washed down these delectable morsels with an Australian wine - a 2001 William Downie pinot noir from the Yarra Valley, a mere 50 minutes drive away.

The main dish for the meat eaters was the veal rack and veal schnitzel with sauce ravigote. The veal was accompanied by a choice Italian chianti: a 2001 Poggerino classic chianti from Tuscany. The vegetarians ate a shallot and marinated fetta tart with zucchini flowers and baby vegetables accompanied by a 2001 Beaujolais. And if you didnt fancy either the veal or the fetta tart the third option was an aromatic seafood braise of snapper, Western Australian scampi and clams. The sommelier had chosen an Austrian 2005 Saloman Undhof Von Stein Gruner Veldiner to go with the main seafood dish.

The Austrian white was also the wine that went with the tofu and celery salad, dish three on the vegetarian menu.

It was certainly time to take a breather after the fifth dish. Our party of seven was situated in the heart of the restaurant - the Red Room - with the main kitchen behind us and a food preparation area worked by three chefs not far from our table.

We enjoyed excellent service throughout the meal as the waitresses juggled the wide variety of dishes and the various wines listed for each course on the menus - main and vegetarian.

Glasses had to be regularly swapped and the plates, of a delightful Scandinavian design, were whipped away adroitly when the dishes had been eaten.

Our party had opted to pay an extra $15 per person for the cheese dish. This was comte gruyere, a semi-hard French cows milk cheese served with roasted walnuts, baby pear and toasted baguette. Even for those in our party not overly fond of anything slightly sweet, the French chenin blanc from the Loire Valley which accompanied the cheese dish was roundly praised.

Sommelier Foster later explained the chenin blanc was a moelleux (or mellow) wine, containing between 40 to 80 grams of sugar per litre. This was a lot less sugar a litre compared with, say, a noble rot dessert wine from the de Bortoli label, Foster said.

Your French wine came from the Pichot Vouvray collection, and was named: Cote de la biche or the deers domain.

Onto the palate cleanser next, a fresh white peach and champagne granita served with raspberries and almond milk. Half a glass of cool water was all we needed here.

The dessert topped off the entire evening. Fig, caramelised pastry and chocolate ganache with Armagnac cream came with a glass of a 2000 German auslese riesling from Rheinhessen.

Not too sweet and certainly not cloying, the German wine matched the dessert brilliantly.

And the cost for this sumptuous repast? $90 per person for the eight dishes and $60 a head for the accompanying wines.

Oh, and another $15 for each person choosing the cheese dish. So $165 all up if you tried everything.

What people at my wifes place of employment do is to put aside $3 a week ($6 if theyre taking a partner) and the sizeable kitty at the end of 52 weeks is used for a big nosh-up. The money sits in a special meals account until its time for the serious dining.

Theres always a little extra to cater for pre-dinner champagne and coffee at the end.

So far for their end-of-year (sometimes January) treats theyve eaten at the Flower Drum in the city, Richmonds Pearl, the Botanical in South Yarra, Daylesfords Lake House in central Victoria and Taxi in Federation Square.

Thats six of the very best in Victoria.

I would thoroughly recommend the weekly or fortnightly method of compulsory saving as the ideal way to fund a big end-of-year Christmas treat for work parties.

Three, One, Two is at 312 Drummond Street, Carlton, Victoria. www.threeonetwo.com.au

1 February 2007

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