Lunch @ The Orchard Food and Wine Bar

I've had this place on my to go list for a little while now, so when we happened to be in the area working, the opportunity presented itself to finally get in a visit.





The Orchard is located in Beatty Avenue, which runs alongside the Toorak train line, between Malvern and High Streets.  The owner used to be the Restaurant Manager at Ten Minutes by Tractor and the food  here has a french-italian-spanish feel.

We decide to start off with something to share - from the appetisers

Fried School Prawns

Must say with this an exceptionally generous serve which we greedily devoured - perfectly crisp shells surrounding sweet prawn meat.

There is a charcuterie section on the menu but we hate to discriminate so we opted for the charcuterie selection.

Charcuterie Selection (Capocollo, Jamon, Bresola, Terrine) with Pickled Vegetables

Once again a generous offering and extremely well presented too. The various meats were freshly sliced, still soft and moist. Excellent house made grissini and pickled vegetables.

For mains:

Gnocchi

While these gnocchi are a little larger than I'd prefer, they were some of the best gnocchi I've eaten in a restaurant. Soft and full of potato flavour, they were perfect to soak up the juices of the ragu.

Steak, Roast Potatoes, Green Beans

This was from the lunch menu and I think it was under $20 which in our book, for the quality of the steak and that jus, is a absolute steal. Even those roasted potatoes were great.

Brussels Sprouts and Lardons

We didn't really need these but come on, who can really resist sprouts and lardons?

Delice de Bourgone

To end what was a rather excellent lunch, a slice of perfection in the form of Delice de Bourgone.

I suppose I should make a note about the wine bar part of the name. There's a huge selection of beers and quite interesting wines by the glass - always a positive for us to see Italian wines available.

  The details:

  The Orchard Food and Wine Bar
  24 Beatty Avenue
  Armadale

  Phone: 03 9822 2077

  Open:
  Tuesday to Friday 10am to 11pm
  Saturday 9am to 11pm

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