A special night at Subo

Can you believe it, twenty five years ago I left a Halloween party with an attractive fellow in order to eat chocolate cake in the early hours of the morning and watch the sun rise from Fairy Bower.  Last night we celebrated that anniversary with dinner at Subo.

Subo (two hats from the SMH Good Food Guide and walking distance from our house) offers a five course tasting menu for $88 per person in an intimate space.  A little too intimate when you're seated near someone who doesn't have an "inside voice".  Service is warm and friendly yet still professional. Same number of hats as Mr Wong but an entirely different experience.

To start our meal, warm sourdough (from the nearby Baked Uprising) was served with house churned butter with rosemary salt.  Matt enjoyed a martini (with two olives, made with Hendricks) while I had a glass of sparkling rose as the first course was presented.  Fraser Island spanner crab on two layers of puree - a pea and a macadamia - was topped with a wasabi pea crunch although I didn't get a lot of wasabi flavour.  A wafer completed the dish.  The delicate flavours made a lovely start to the meal, the macadamia being somehow reminiscent of tahini.  Well, they're both nuts I suppose.  Sorry no picture, it was even worse than my usual efforts, something to do with big white plate and flash photography.

The second course was my favourite of the evening.  Boneless spatchcock was cooked over charcoal  and served with a leek puree and shredded leek as well as angel hair chilli.  Flavours were smokey and intense - chicken and charcoal are a natural pairing!  The meat was moist and tasty.  We had this with a bottle of Anisfield rose from Central Otago ($50) made with pinot noir grapes it had plenty of fruit flavour but finished on a very dry note.

Spiffing spatchcock.  Shame about the photo.

Our main course was lamb served two ways, a glazed belly and a cutlet with fermented chilli and saltbush.  I gave Matt my chilli as it tasted all too much like capsicum for me.  He's never going to complain about extra chilli.  The lamb cutlet was served rare and we both gnawed it down to the bone! The belly, while delicious, I was unable to finish as it was very, very rich (I cut the fat off my bacon so you can imagine a slice of very fat lamb was a little too much).  Accompanying was a dish of the crunchiest, tastiest greens (radish, snow peas and sugar snap peas) which had been finished with grapeseed oil, a little sugar and soy and was served cold.  A glass of pinot noir was matched with the lamb (Carlei Green, Yarra Valley, $11).

The lamb two ways and the crunchy vegies. 

Two desserts completed the meal,  Matt found the first, a strawberry concoction with kaffir lime and lemon granita very much to his taste while I preferred the honey and aniseed parfait served with lemon balm, pineapple ice, pineapple curd and chips of honeycomb more to my taste.  It was like a large, frozen, licorice all-sort, not overly sweet and full of interesting textures.

Strawberry something, we're just not quite sure what (it was very tasty and the granita had bite).

Subo is well worth a visit for a special occasion (let's just say the bill was A Lot, do check it) and I would recommend selecting a booking later in the evening so you can linger over your meal.  

The parfait.  Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this photography in the dark thing, out of focus again.

After my terrible photos in the dark at Mr Wong I took my actual camera and discovered it actually has a 'food/still life' selection, however, I wasn't happy with the flash (or the picture quality) as it can be intrusive and disturbing for other diners.  Maybe on our next adventure I'll take my tablet which I can select a faster shutter speed on and see how that works.