Dining Out - The Hatter and The Hare

I promised you all earlier this month that I'd talk about this place later. It's now 'later', and hopefully I can do this place justice in one post.

Bookings...

We were quite a sizeable group of 9, including 5 adults and 4 children. Once we'd decided that we were going, one of us rang up to make a booking, as large walk in groups aren't easy to accommodate in a popular place. Turns out that they don't do bookings, so we turned up around 12:30 pm on a Sunday to the not surprising wait time of 30 minutes being told to us. It was more like 45 minutes, which if we'd been told 45 minutes at the start, we'd probably have gone elsewhere. I understand the reasons for not taking bookings for small numbers, but not for larger groups that require either a specific table, or multiple tables to be joined together to actually be accommodated.

The atmosphere

Busy was my first impression. Followed by seeing the dessert displays, which are glossy and looking very tempting. The third of my initial impressions was the theme, which is mostly confined to the food and it's naming. As you can probably guess from the name, it is Alice in Wonderland themed.

There seemed to be a fair amount of people coming in just to buy take away desserts. While we were waiting we were kind of squished into an area to be out of the way, though I really felt like we were still in the way, but we were in an area where we could look in through the window to one of the kitchen areas where desserts were prepared. Not a lot of action going on in there at that time though.

Finally seated

When we were finally seated, we had a nice long high table along one of the walls near the open window/wall at the front. It was a great location to be out of the general noise in the middle of the room, as well as not feeling surrounded by others, which I'm sure we'd have felt if we were in the middle with the kids in our group. Having been looking through the menu while we were waiting though, most of us had already made decisions and backup decisions, which meant there wasn't another half hour before ordering.

Our Orders

We didn't quite order one of everything off the menu, but we were getting close. The kids had a combination of "Knave of Heart's treat", "King's horses & soldiers", and side of chips (for the youngest). The Knave is a French toast dish, with berries and fruits. I managed to score some of the leftovers from the child that was defeated by their dish. King's horses and soldiers is basically Boiled eggs with sourdough toast, which I was a bit disappointed to see they didn't chop the head off the egg before or at the table.

^{Knave of Heart's treat leftovers that I scored. If I could make French toast like this I would do it far more often. Supurb}

The adults selection included "The Caterpiller's Riddle", "Tweedledum Burger", "The Caucus Race", "Rollin' Wonder", and "The Jabberwocky's Tale". I'll focus mostly on the last three as they were what I tasted, and all things I was considering ordering (I ended up ordering the Jabberwocky).

First up I'll say that all the dishes looked fantastic when they arrived at the table. This place certainly knows how to plate up food so it looks good. It also provided me with a first, as I'd never ordered a meal that came in a dome like this did.

^{Smokey, and spilling out from under the dome too}

My first taste of food though came from one of the other diner's plates, as I was offered a piece of gnocchi from their dish "The Caucus Race". I'm not sure I've had better gnocchi, as it was very good and soft and pillowy. A nice balance between the ricotta (in the gnocchi itself), and the orange and truffle in the sauce.

Time to uncover and taste my dish. It's full description is: "House-cured & Seared Atlantic Salmon, Pea Mousse, Roasted Beets, Quinoa, Apple, Shaved Fennel, Toasted Rye."

^{So many components with so many good points}

Some of you might think that salmon needs cooking more, but with the smoking and searing it was absolutely perfect. Crispy skin, soft and melty flesh, and enough smoke that there was a little flavour from it carried through everything. The roasted beets were nice and soft all the way through, but far better was the powdered beet all the way across the plate. The apple and fennel 'slaw' combined nicely with the pea mousse that it was all sitting on top of and the fresh cubes of orange and freeze dried peas were a nice touch that fit with the dish well. The only thing that stood out as "why is this even here" is that prominently positioned piece of toasted rye. It served no purpose, and I ended up eating it separately to everything else. I would certainly eat this again. The other thing I got to taste was the "Rollin' Wonder", which surprised us when it came out as it's described as a roll, but really is a burger. In a black bun. Nothing in it's description prepared us for that part of it. It was however quite a good burger that I would have been quite happy with if I'd ordered it.

^{Rollin' Wonder, served with sweet potato fries. King's Horses & Soldiers in the background}

Desserts

As mentioned before, we were so full from these main courses that we decided against desserts, but I couldn't leave Melbourne without at least trying some of them, so I purchased 3 for myself and my hosts to share later. They became dessert for the light dinner we had that evening.

^{Red: The Queen. Orange: Nave. Purple: Cheshire Cat}

For my tastes, the desserts were too sweet, and the bases were a kind of spongey biscuit thing that I didn't like. The others certainly enjoyed them far more than I did. The top halves were a lot better, and all consisted of a center, surrounded by a mousse of sorts, and then all had some kind of shell followed by the coloured glaze and edible decorations. Disappointingly, the white logo square wasn't edible and was just a bit of thin cardboard.

Reflections

Overall, this place was excellent, and I very much recommend that you go along and try some interesting food with a little bit of crazy and wonder in the Alice theme. It's certainly on the expensive side, with mains from around $17 up to $26 and the pictured desserts were about $8 each, but asides from the desserts I certainly had my value for money, and I can see the value in the desserts as they are quite technical, just not to my tastes. Would certainly like to return here when I'm in Melbourne again.

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Previous Dining Out Posts

Eurobay, Arisun, Big John's, Bondi Pizza

Last Bus, Chat Thai, Rocksia Hotel, Ichiban Boshi

Alphabet St, 360 Italian, Mary's, Sushi Rio

Olive Tree Kafe & Bar

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