One Tree Grill

By ELEANOR BLACK for canvas

Sitting alongside a clutch of middle-of-the-road clothing and curio shops at Greenwoods Corner, One Tree Grill does not look like the kind of place where they dish up raw ostrich and expect you to be happy about it.

With its high-backed seats and super-polite waitstaff (all wearing pale green ties to match the walls), the restaurant appears conservative, solid, safe. But lurking among the more suburban menu items - lamb fillet with couscous, chicken pasta - are challenging dishes requiring a zest for adventure.

Feeling experimental and missing the word "carpaccio", Tim ordered the ostrich trio ($15.50), an entree bent on making a virtue of raw bird-flesh done three ways. The sushi roll was memorable, consisting of small, pink gems of ostrich - virtually the same colour as our Martinborough Ata Rangi Rose ($43.50) - wrapped in noodles and nori, and resting on zingy wasabi aioli.

The seared ostrich fillet (raw in the centre, he reported sadly, poking it with his fork) was served on root vegetable mash and looked and tasted the most like conventional food, but the tenderised flap of uncooked ostrich carpaccio, spread across the large square plate like road-kill, was horrid. So visually unsettling, in fact, that it drew comment from the next table. As for taste, it was a mouthful of slimy nothingness.

My hot and sour mushroom soup ($10.50) was good, if a bit too sweet for my palate. The bowl was packed to the brim with several kinds of fungus, some carrot and celery, and two floating pasta parcels stuffed with chestnut. It was a real stomach-stoker - warming and filling.

I made the mistake of eating it all and by the time my gorgeously tender chicken kiev ($24.50) arrived, I was less interested than I should have been. It was a wonderful dish: organic chicken resting on a heap of spicy lentils, offset by tart cumin-apple butter. Filling up on the slim-line fries ($5) and mixed vegetables ($5.50) ordered on the side seemed shameful, so they were left largely untouched.

Tim's pan-seared snapper ($25.90) came with a generous dollop of cauliflower cream, a single perfect vine tomato and four or five crispy polenta chips. It was good, but not special.

A cheering dessert was needed, and we found it in the Italian iced souffle ($12), a layer each of cherry and chocolate-hazelnut parfait with chunks of amaretti. A tiny pot of hot chocolate sauce on the side tipped the dish, big enough for two, from delicious to divine. It was a high point on which to end the evening and inducement enough to return to this sophisticated restaurant, which has fed us well in the past. Next time we will ask for help when ordering, to avoid ostrich-style disasters.

Cost: Entrees, mains, vegetables, one dessert and a bottle of wine, $142.40

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