Herald on Sunday rating: * * * * *
Where: St Patrick's Square
Ph: 368 4129
Open: Monday-Friday noon-late; Saturday 6pm-late
Wine list: Deep and wide
Vegetarians: One entree, one main
Watch out for: The jargon
Sound check: Conversation-friendly
Bottom line: Sublime.
A down to earth reader emailed me to lament the profusion of flash expressions on menus.
She asked about "degustation" - a word that restaurants here use for a tasting menu; in France it is applied to a set menu. But she also introduced me to "liaison".
My research revealed that, to a chef, it means a thickening agent, usually of egg yolks and cream, but the pretentious wallies at the place where she had eaten had used it to mean the sauce thus thickened.
At the Grove there is a "financier" on the dessert menu. The Blonde asked the waitress what it meant.
"Yes, I get asked that a lot," the waitress said ("You don't say," I thought) and went into a long and pretty handy explanation.
It turns out that it salutes neither a particular member of the investment community nor the entire occupational group (which must have contributed more than its share to the restaurant's success). Google it and you will find that it is "sometimes called a friand".
Well, actually, if you'll forgive me for saying so, it is almost invariably called a friand; financier sounds, well, fancier, but if you want people to stop asking what's for pudding, it would make sense to call it a friand.
I'm not having a go at The Grove here, you understand. The restaurant world is full of fancy terminology.
I love "large-format wines", which The Grove is not alone in listing: a large-format wine comes in a big bottle, like a magnum or jeroboam, but because the big bottles contain really, really nice wine and they cost an arm and a leg, you can't call them big bottles because that's common.
Likewise the vegetarian main at The Grove is called an "assiette" of vegetables; if you did French at school you learned in the third form that "assiette" means plate, but who wants to watch the rest of the table eat milk-fed veal loin or duck breast with caramelised pork while settling for a "plate" of vegetables. The least you deserve if you're paying $32 is an assiette.
In point of fact The Grove is so damn good that they can call the food anything they want.
Since Michael Meredith moved on to start up his eponymous establishment in Dominion Rd, Sid Sahrawat has been turning heads all over town, winning Lewisham Awards in successive years - at the George in Parnell and now here.
In a simple long room - blond wooden floor, white linen, black padded walls - waiting staff of consummate intelligence and professionalism attend to the delivery of some of the best food in town: goat's-curd-and-chive tortellini with roasted beetroot; medium-rare slices of creamy-white veal loin with escargot and saffron foam.
The sweet-toothed can skip a main course and save room for a dessert degustation - a New Zealand first, I think - for $50.
Description of individual dishes seems superfluous, particularly since the menu has probably changed since I went. In any case, someone without words like financier and assiette at his disposal might have difficulty doing them justice.
My advice, addressed in particular to the bloke who wrote to ask what the point is of reviewing restaurants no one can afford to go to: skip a couple of weeks of $120 disappointments and eat in.
Then pick up the phone and make a booking. You'll be glad you did.
THE BILL
$261.50 for three
Entrees (2) $47
Mains (3) $114
Side (1) $10
Desserts (2) $33
Wine (five glasses) $57.50
