Lunch @ Barkers Wine Bar

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Lunch @ Barkers Wine Bar

Posted by Haalo

We're back from our new year's sojourn to an empty fridge and since it's never a good idea to go shopping on an empty stomach, we decided to skip out for a quick lunch and one of the few places that we found actually open is ~~the Beehive~~ Barkers.

This first dish of oysters was a "happy new year" treat from the kitchen

3 plain and 3 of the wood-fired kilpatricks. Now Paalo is an oyster purist but that hasn't stopped him being curious about the wood-fired versions and I can report that he certainly did enjoy them. Most of the heat was absorbed by the shell and it left the oysters with an accentuated sea flavour. Hard to explain but after having one plain and following it with a kilpatrick, the oyster of the latter had a stronger flavour.

This was one of the specials of the day and we were never going to resist the combination of zucchini flowers and brandade

Three crisp, brandade stuffed flowers served with a small salad of asian influenced flavours, coriander, mint, chili, noodle. You'll have to battle it out for who gets the third flower.

Of all the many great components on this plate, there's one we both particularly love

and it's those breadsticks. They are served warm from the oven and are additively good. You'll also find marinated salmon with chilli yuzu sauce, salami, prosciutto, blue cheese, country terrine, parfait, pork rillettes and an assortment of pickles and olives.

While we were here we found out that there are some changes coming this month - take away pizza and weekend breakfasts.