The elegant menus at The Meat & Wine Co. Photo: Kazuri Photography.
I finally ticked The Meat & Wine Co off my foodie bucket list – for my birthday! It’s a restaurant I’ve been eyeing off ever since it opened. My birthdays usually equal an Ethiopian feast, but this year we chose South African and went all out, and wow, what an experience!
The Meat & Wine Co is known for its iconic steak, especially its butter-smooth, lusciously marbled, dry-aged steak.
Dining at a steak house is not cheap, so I did my research, scouring TripAdvisor reviews, messaging friends who eat there regularly and watching lots of videos of people dining at the Canberra Meat & Wine Co or one of its Sydney counterparts.
From that input, I worked out the non-negotiable side dishes and meat experiences we would be ordering to share alongside any individual choices.
The Meat & Wine Co offers a reasonably priced express lunch where one course is $39, two courses are $49 or three courses cost an extremely reasonable $55. The set menus, that start at $99 per person and offer a choice of entree, main and dessert, are also a clever way to go.
The ribs platter. Photo: Kazuri Photography.
If this wasn’t my once-in-a-lifetime dinner, I would definitely have opted for a set menu option. As it was, I spent my research perusing menus, photos and reviews when I was hungry and the list of ‘must-orders’ grew to near ridiculous proportions.
The biggest unknown was our table host, because they can set the tone for a dining experience. We were in luck! Our host, Rabs, expertly explained everything on the menu and matched our playful vibe.
The pull-apart garlic buns delivered a delightfully oozy middle, fragrant with garlicky goodness, tinged green with herbs. Every mouthful included a feather-soft dusting of Parmesan cheese and crispy garlic shards.
Sonoma Miche sourdough arrived – a warm mini loaf with a richly-hued crumb. Between biltong butter or cultured butter as an accompaniment, we chose to have biltong butter, which had rustic meaty shreds of biltong through it.
I enjoyed the bruschetta, the sourdough crisp at the edges, its centre lush with avocado, roma tomato, oregano, basil, Parmesan. I still prefer classic bruschetta without avocado though.
We chose two of the featured skewers. All the skewers come with chips or salad.
The Meat & Wine Co chips are my favourite chip shape. Broad and not too fat, they are the perfect shape to achieve a really big crunch with a fluffy interior.
Our lemon pepper lamb skewer was juicy, having been marinated delightfully in Greek flavours and then kissed by flame.
We ordered the Coffee Rub Kangaroo because it was the most unusual skewer on the menu. I was half expecting the meat to be tough, but the grilled chunks tasted tender and smoky.
The Hasselback Potato arrived with ‘beef dripping butter, caramelised onion and Gruyère.’ It tasted good, but we preferred our other sides.
I did not give the onion rings the attention they deserved. Crisply battered and fried onion curls, like a bowl of Medusa hair tendrils, they were well seasoned and delicious.
The mash was smooth perfection and satisfying to eat. We dragged forkfuls of mash into the array of scrumptious sauces our table somehow accumulated.
We demolished the ribs platter. They were tasty and tender, but I wished there were more of the beef ribs.
We ate steak, of course. The steak highlight was the dry-aged steak that we shared. Medium rare with intense umami notes, it melted away in our mouths. Worth the money!
But the absolute dish of the night? The truffle mac & cheese. Al dente and luxurious, it managed the perfect ratio of cheeses to truffle to sauce to mac. I could not stop picking at it and marvelling at its earthy, cheesy depths.
Our dish of the night: the truffle mac & cheese. Photo: Kazuri Photography.
We finished on dessert, but we shouldn’t have – a creme brulee, and a sticky date pudding that our host turned into an impromptu birthday cake that came out with a sparkler and the birthday song. We were too full to properly appreciate how yummy they were.
It is worth checking out the liquid desserts available, each infused with adult beverages such as Frangelico, Baileys and Tia Maria.
My decision to go all out was probably not the right way to approach The Meat & Wine Co. Next time, I would order a couple of our favourite sides to accompany a good steak.
The Meat & Wine Co is a fabulous ‘meatery’, and our interactions with Rabs made the experience even more special.
If you love steak and want an elevated experience, it is worth every bite – just pace yourself.
The Meat & Wine Co is located at Constitution Pl, Ground Level/1 on Constitution Ave. It is open from noon to 9:30 pm on weekdays and until 10 pm on weekends. Follow Canberra’s The Meat & Wine Co on Facebook.
