With the tongue-in-cheek title ''Bambi and Thumper Get Hot and Heated'', The White Swan's latest venison and rabbit pate-fused dish might not appeal to everyone's better taste _ but taste great it does.
The Greytown establishment has entered it in the Beer and Wild Food Challenge run by brewers Monteith's. TheWhite Swan's winter menu describes the dish as ''succulent Wairarapa venison wrapped in bacon and cooked to perfection, served medium rare resting on a tower of home-cut kumara chips and then crowned with a delicate wild rabbit pate.''.
The dish, the result of three weeks' development, is drizzled with a manuka honey, thyme and wild berry jus, and aims to complement Monteith's original ale.
''We wanted to do something with venison as a lot of people don't realise how good it is for you, and it's a health option that's been shied away from in the past,'' White Swan proprietor Rob Slater said.
The name, coined by himself and wife Jaime, was ''a play on words and just a bit of fun _ we've got two little girls, which made us think of the old Disney-type characters''.
People who order the dish can text their vote on it to Monteith's before July 18.
