When people ask us what our favourite restaurants in Melbourne were, Supernormal is one of the first places that spring to mind. We left quite a few restaurants in Melbourne promising
ourselves we’d go back. But then we got super engaged in crossing the Top 100
restaurants off the list and we never did. Except for Supernormal. We hit it
first off for lunch on the second day of our trip, and the first day staying in
the city. It’s a relatively large restaurant on Flinders Lane, with a large
glass window and a cheery cherry neon sign welcoming you. We were offered a
seat at the bar, as the dining area was full. No worries. We soon learnt that
being a couple in Melbourne means you eat at the bar, or wait a long time. But
if you are normally against this sort of thing, at least do it at Supernormal.
Trust me, they’re the best seats in the house. Especially if you sit on the
kitchen side, rather than the bar side. We not only received the best service
from the bar staff and wait staff, we also watched the chefs at work, and
chatted to them about what they were doing, and the best dishes to order. It
was so incredibly fun, and we left feeling part of the Supernormal family.
The only downside of watching the food being cooked is that
you get food envy, even though what you are eating is amazing. Which, apart
from feeling like family (a sentiment backed up by the warm greeting we
received on our second visit), was probably a large part of why this was the
only restaurant we revisited. We were stuffed full, but so entranced by some
dishes being plated, we had to try them!
As with the majority of restaurants in Melbourne (and
Perth!), the dish style here is share plates. A form of meal Lance and I revel
in. We started with the sea urchin crackers, a special of the day. The look of
the sea urchin was a little off-putting (I think the term ‘manky vagina’ might
have come up), but the dish itself was anything but manky. Raw, thinly sliced
sea urchin, on a housemade seaweed cracker with pickled onion. The ocean
flavour of the urchin was strong, the texture slightly chewy, slightly silky.
The seaweed cracker snapped, crackled and dissolved as you ate it, like a thin
prawn cracker, and the pickled onion set everything off.
The white cut chicken salad was ordered on a recommendation
by Rob Broadfield at the reviewers lunch I attended, and it didn’t disappoint. The soba noodles, seaweed and
spring onions the perfect base for the perfectly poached then chilled chicken
and spicy sauce. The chicken was so tender and clean, not the slimy texture you
can get with cold cooked chook.
We then went the bao route. Given my love of duck, that was
a given, so we grabbed a duck leg seeing as there was just the two of us, and
the pork bao. The pork was braised, crumbed and fried, and served with a
tamarind sauce. This sauce was spicy, rather than the sticky sweet style of
tamarind sauce I’m more used to. The spice and tartness of the sauce balancing
the fluffy white mantou bun and rich fried pork well. The duck came DIY style.
A plate of buns, a plate with the duck and cucumber, and a couple of sauce
dishes. At first glance, the duck leg looked dusted in cocoa, but it was a
dark, thin crispy shell created from the deep frying. It cracked open
satisfyingly to reveal moist flesh that fell easily off the bone. The plum
sauce and vinaigrette complimented it perfectly.
We wanted to keep eating at this point, but simply could
not. So we ordered dessert. We shared the green tea and plum soft serve –
playful in it’s colourful swirl, and texturally spot-on. The tart plum soft
serve, compote and freeze dried pieces playing well against the grassy matcha.
The peanut butter parfait was pure sweet heaven. A peanutty mousse on a macaron
base with that wonderful chewiness macarons get. Salted caramel sauce, peanuts
scattered about the place and a ball of chocolate ganache mousse finishing off
the sweetness overload. Lance got this the second visit too.
Our second visit was our last dinner in Melbourne and made
the perfect finish to the trip. We ordered three dishes, only one of which is
still on the menu a few months later – the New England Lobster rolls. These
were sweet and delicate parcels of lobster in a soft buttery bun. And my
dessert was the baked ginger pudding. Straight from the oven in a cast iron
pan, this dense gingerbread style pudding was everything Christmas dreams are
made of. Realistically, this was big enough to be a share pudding – but after
two weeks of doing nothing but eating, I greedily fit in the whole thing! Lance
was too busy eating a peanut butter parfait to care too much!
Definitely deserves it's spot on our top 3 "normal" restaurant list. (Vue de Monde is in a class of it's own!!)
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