It’s a chilly Winter’s day and I’m running late for a lunch date with my friend, Kerina. I’m not sure what happened but when you have small kids you can have two hours to get ready and still not manage to leave the house on time. Do other parents experience this?
So when my 5 year old and I arrive at The Pot in Hyde Park I’m feeling a bit hassled (my toddler is with my parents). My patient friend, on the other hand, is enjoying a cup of English Breakfast tea and looks completely relaxed.
One lovely thing about old chums is that they readily forgive your lapses and Kerina and I have known each other for nearly 20 years. We met first year at Adelaide University during a Philosophy 1A lecture and hit if off when we discovered we both loved Sydney band The Clouds. Later, we edited Adelaide University’s newspaper, On Dit, together.
I scope the restaurant. It feels brisk and modern, utilitarian and unfussy in design (e.g. the industrial lights, the brown paper ‘wallpaper’ and the brown paper ‘table linen’), and professional but relaxed.
We’re starving – I haven’t eaten since 7:30am – so decide to order straight away but are stumped by the breakfast menu, which offers me too many dishes that sound like ‘must-haves’. In the end we decide to order four dishes to share, plus another English Breakfast tea ($4) for me and a Coco Pops milkshake ($7) for my daughter.
“I can’t work out why my (skinny) jeans seem tighter all of a sudden,” I say brightly as I hand back the menus to our friendly server.
The first dish is all about the magic of mushrooms.
Mushrooms and fresh cheese are popping up everywhere I’ve eaten lately. I enjoyed fried mushrooms with Woodside Cheese Wrights fresh curd on grilled bruschetta at Maggie Beer’s Farm House and roasted mushrooms on ciabatta at No 58 Cellar Door and Gallery. I also cooked Balsamic Mushroom and Taleggio cheese for my About.com site.
The Pot’s version – Truffle Mushrooms with Fresh Ricotta on Grilled Bruschetta ($18) – sees buttery fried mushrooms enhanced with the subtle flavour of truffles and finished with some good olive oil and fresh parsley. I die for truffles and would have loved double the amount used in this dish but it is still very good.
Kerina orders the Scrambled Egg, Blue Swimmer Crab, Tomato and Toast. I adore the sweetness and firmness of Blue Swimmer Crab flesh and the egg and crab are such a killer combination. I also like tomatoes with my eggs – as long as they don’t make the dish soggy – and here The Pot have got the consistency just right.
The next dish is my favourite and it’s so good I’m going to call it now: The Pot’s Confit Duck and Scallop Omelette ($22) is up there with Cafe Ish’s legendary Soft Shell Crab, Avocado and Sweet Chili Omelette that I ate in March. It’s one of those dishes that you eat and think, of course!, because it’s such an inspired combination of flavours and textures.
The eggs goes superbly with the richness of the duck, the just cooked scallops and the hoisin-y sauce, while the fresh spring onions, coriander and strips of chilli offer some relief from the richness and cut through the heaviness of it all. It’s a bit like a breakfast version of Beijing Duck (roasted duck served with Chinese-style pancakes, hoisin sauce, spring onions, cucumber and hoisin sauce). Go to The Pot as soon as possible and order this dish.
My daughter wants a burger so I order her The Pot’s breakfast burger ($15) which is actually a Berkshire ham and Tilset cheese roll, finished off with a freshly fried egg and creme fraiche. It comes with a (home-made?) tomato sauce/relish, which she doesn’t like, but I do. See how she’s picked bits out of the roll?
Nom nom nom.
After lingering to catch up on our news we head out into the cool air, feeling up to anything. The lunch has been a tonic for both of us and we’re feeling revitalised and refreshed. The marvellous thing about old friends is that they don’t judge and you can relax completely around them.
Actually, I think The Pot might just qualify for ‘old friend’ status. Try it and tell me what you think.
The Pot
160 King William Road, Hyde Park, South Australia
Tel: 08 8373 2044
Email: eat@thepotfoodandwine.com.au
Christina Soong-Kroeger dined at The Pot courtesy of Mushroom Growers Australia as part of Mushroom Mania.
Mushroom Mania is on for all of July and over 2,000 restaurants are participating by putting delicious mushrooms on the menu. See Mushroom Mania for details. You can also enter the Eat.Blog. Win. competition, which closes soon. All you need to do is eat out at one of the participating restaurants, order a mushroom dish and then write a short review about it on the entry page. All entries go into the draw to win a $150 best restaurants voucher. Too easy!
