Dinner at Libertine

[Shinboners]

It's back to the Peoples Republic of North Melbourne, and dammit, if I was unhappy with how the place has changed after my last visit (to the Court House), I reckon I can start to forgive after last night's dinner at Libertine. I reckon we're getting lucky down here in Melbourne with more French restaurants that seem to be doing their thing pretty well.

It's a small place, and it seats no more than about 40. So it's intimate, quite warm, and as my significant other said, it's more like a parlour than a bistro.

There's about half a dozen choices for each course plus nightly specials. I started off with crumbed and fried lambs brains. Three pieces arrived, attractively placed on a plate with a white sauce in the middle. The sauce made little impact on me, but the brains were sensational, smooth and creamy in their crunchy coating. The missus enjoyed half a dozen escargot, cooked in butter and garlic and served in their shells. Interestingly, unlike many other restaurants, they didn't drown the snails in the butter and garlic, so you got to taste the almost grassy flavour of the snails. I reckon that escargot succeeds on the strength of the sauce, and so with that, this dish didn't quite work for me. However, she loved it.

My main was a cote de boeuf, served with bernaise sauce and chips. The meat was served medium-rare, slightly towards rare (as per my request), and it was juicy, tender, and sweet. It was a very good steak, but it wouldn't be amongst the best that I've had. The bernaise sauce lacked punch, but the chips. Oh, the chips. Nine thick cut pieces of potato that were fried in.....oh, I just love thinking about it....duck fat. I'm dribbling just thinking about it. Crunchy on the outside, meltingly soft on the inside, and so richly flavoured. Glorious.

Meanwhile, the missus had braised rabbit, cooked with its kidney and liver (rolled inside the meat), and served with mash potato and spinach. The meat was tender, the flavours came out strong, but surprisingly, without the gamey taste you can often get with rabbit.

As for desserts, both were excellent. I enjoyed a strawberry parfait with bits of white chocolate in it. It was lovely and smooth, the berry flavour wasn't overpowering, and the white chocolate providing a good contrast. There were sqeals of delight from the other side of the table over the chocolate fondant. It was like a hot chocolate pudding, with fresh cream poured on top of it at the table. The chocolate was superb, dark and earthy in flavour, and very moist in the mouth. Mixed with the cold cream, and like the Flaming Homer, it was like a party in your mouth and you're all invited.

The service was brilliant. Our waitress was very friendly, and she knew how to guide us with our selections. Out of habit, we always order fries when we're at a French restaurant. But she noted that our mains came with potatoes, and that if we wanted a side, something else would be better. We really appreciated that - it shows awareness and enough care to help the diner enjoy their night.

We had a fine night. My only main quibble is that whilst our dishes were all very good, I think they could be taken to the next level if they get their sauces right.

All the mains were just below the $30 mark, with entrees and desserts were pitched at $12 and sides at $6.

We will definitely return to Libertine, and I reckon the place is well worth a visit.

[Julian Teoh]

A while ago, I was lamenting the demise of Balzac at St Paul's, when Shinboners recommended Libertine as a suitable alternative. Since then, I've made quite a few trips to Melbourne and dined at quite a few decent places, somehow always managing to miss Libertine.

Not this time.

I would repeat Shinboners' observations about the decor and leave it at that.

Our entrees of 6 escargots de bourgogne and Hervey Bay Scallops with salt cod salad arrived soon after we were seated. The snails were dry and overcooked, drowning in a torrent of parsleyed and garlicked oil. There was no pretence of slipping them in shells for presentation; if they were baked in the oil, they probably ended up deep-fried to a husk, which I suspect is precisely what happened. The scallops lacked caramelisation; sprinkles of fried shallots added a tantalising sweetness, but there was nothing doing to make me sit up and take notice.

At this stage, the meal had a serious WTF factor. "Entree-itis" is a very common disease in Australian restaurants where the entrees pack serious flavour and artistic punch and the mains slide off into glorified meat-and-three-veg. Starting off with nuked snails and atypically boring shellfish, what further insults could we endure?

That's where I didn't reckon with the joy of eating with your fingers. Mains were bouillabaisse and "poussin with wild mushrooms and cognac." Bouillabaisse had mussels, clams, fish, prawns, half a bug (smashing stuff) and half a crab (great). It didn't help that the first morsel I tasted (the clam) was overcooked, which led me into further inward anger and frustration. But the rest of it was divine, perked up with lots of fresh dill and a base of vermicelli. Very tender poussin was bathed in an intense stock, although I'm not sure that shiitake and wood-ear mushrooms classify as wild. Cognac added a nice woody sweetness to the very worthy chicken flavour. Dive in, get your hands dirty, the voices tell me. So with my fingers and napkin rapidly getting dirty and the juices (from the dishes, that is) rapidly intermingling, despite the early disappointments, I find myself almost forgiving the sins of the entrees. Almost.

Where to from here? Cheese plate - rouzaire coulommieres (brie to you and me, or at least a very close relation thereto), roquefort by Papillon and caprinelle, aged goat cheese. Walnut toasts, quince paste, muscatels and slices of william pear are fitting companions.

Nearing the end, I feel that forgiveness, very hard-earned in this materialistic and agnostic age, is extremely near. A dark chocolate souffle, which has the solid feel of having been reinforced with flour or some other sort of stabiliser, is almost devillish in its intent, especially after Matthew the Waiter slashes the souffle and fills it with warm white chocolate sauce. A scoop of white chocolate and raspberry ice cream completes the damnation. As a final benediction, Matthew solemnly pronounces that the calories from the chocolate do not count because it is Easter. Immediately, the burden lifts from our hearts, if not our waistlines.

I'm a little conflicted about Libertine; I could so easily have done without the entrees, which added $35 to the bill, little by the way of bulk and nothing by the way of enjoyment. Yet the mains were finger-licking good in a way that would make the Colonel blush, the cheeses were served at a proper temperature and dessert was very good.

Libertine is quite a decent place and I might be tempted to check it out again. But to keep some perspective, the excellent Vera is just down the road from where I'm staying, and I might well hear the siren's song of Barry's pommes frites before the long weekend is out.

[lamington]

I suspect Libertine is treading a fine line between great success and disappointment. Julian's description sums it up nicely. My sister loves the place, had had two 'perfect' meals there, so the whole family went a few weeks ago. Service was fairly good, friendly, accommodating and the wine advice was good too. The fish dishes were pronounced good by those who partook. The chou farci was a ball of bland utterly unremarkable stodge. A fig tart with roquefort cream consisted of a small pastry case filled with frangipane and one or two small slivers of fig, topped with a cream which was simply too pungent to permit much else to come through (not that the notional presence of fig had much likelihood of coming into its own anyway). Other desserts were impressive. If I hadn't had the misfortune of choosing the two dud dishes, I'm sure I would have come away as impressed as Shinboners. But I didn't.

Edited April 9, 2007 by lamington (log)

[Shinboners]

Another dinner at Libertine (to celebrate your's truly's birthday), and we went for the degustation option. I'll list the courses we had, but again, I'm sitting on the other side of the fence to Julian Teoh and lamington. The dinner was wonderful, the atmosphere was great, the service was very good, and all in all, we had a superb time.

The menu was:

French onion soup with gruyere souffle

Grilled languoustines with truffle butter and waldorf salad

Roasted quail with mushroom ragout and soft polenta

Seared tuna with roasted chestnuts, sage spaetzle, and cep jus

Grass fed eye fillet with horseradish cream and crispy sweetbreads

Chocolate souffle

We're planning to return there for a Christmas dinner. Libertine does a suckling pig banquet, and a few of us decided last night to get something organised.

If anyone is interested in joining us, send me a PM.

[Shinboners]

We made another visit to Libertine last night, and we had the suckling pig dinner. It was magnificent.

The format allows you to choose an entree and a dessert, with the suckling pig as the main. Here were the choices:

Entrée

Slipper lobster niçoise, tomato jelly & poached quail egg

Terrine du jour, mini brioche loaf & relishes

Chèvre soufflé, asparagus & tarragon vinaigrette

Plat du jour

Whole roasted Western Plains suckling pig,

baby vegetables & sauce Normande

Dessert

Quince tarte tatin, vanilla & muscatel ice-cream

Honey crème brûlée, cumquat chausson

Rhubarb clafoutis, crème anglaise

Those of you who read last week's Epicure may have read Necia Wilden's article on going to a farm to see the slaughter of a lamb. In her article, she wrote about how a suckling pig was presented to a table, and one of the guests started to cry. Well, with us, a few people averted their eyes, whilst on another table, a girl stared at the pig in shock (ironically, her table had also ordered a pig). Not that ant of this stopped people from tucking in and loving the food.

I won't go into details of the various dishes, but everyone was very happy with what they had. This was my third visit to Libertine, and their food just keeps on getting better. I reckon they will get a chef's hat next year.

My only criticism is that we waited too long between the first course and the main. Other than that, the service was very good.

For my dining group, we're already planning another visit, this time to give the game birds a try.

[Amarantha]

OK, I really, really need to put this place higher on my restaurant wishlist. It'll have to wait until sometime next year, though. Until then, I shall dream about whole roasted pigs...

[Shinboners]

OK, I really, really need to put this place higher on my restaurant wishlist.  It'll have to wait until sometime next year, though.  Until then, I shall dream about whole roasted pigs...

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If you ever do the suckling pig dinner, then you'll need to round up at least 9 other friends to join you.

Our table had 11 (4 guys, 7 gals), and we had leftovers from the main course.

We booked our dinner about a month ago, and I know that I was hoping for cold weather - I don't think I could have handled a suckling pig with the 30 degree weather we had a couple of weeks ago! Still, I didn't quite expect it to be as cold as it was on Saturday night.

[Amarantha]

If you ever do the suckling pig dinner, then you'll need to round up at least 9 other friends to join you.

Damn, it's the Three, One, Two charity table all over again