I was going to open this review with a few words about Mirka Mora, the artist whose whimsical cherubs and mythological creatures adorn the walls of the restaurant bearing her name, but given the extent to which she and her murals have been covered elsewhere to the point of cliché, I’ve decided to open with a fairly blunt assessment of the food the restaurant serves instead. On paper, at least, Mirka’s menu is a compelling list of must-tries: Russian eggs with caviar, steak tartare, seared scallops with blood sausage, rabbit cacciatore, chateaubriand, lemon and orange cannoli, and more. In practice, however, the execution is flawed: too many tasteless and nondescript dishes, unoriginally plated and boring to look at, the occasional flashes of culinary brilliance simply too few and far between.
A so-called omelette Brillat-Savarin ($25) is a fluffy golden envelope of shredded game bird (poussin, pheasant, pigeon, duck and quail) garnished with thin slivers of imported black truffle. It comes with the most marvellous sauce, but to both my surprise and disappointment, I can’t taste the truffle for the game. A special of West Australian sardines cured in semolina—petrified might be a more accurate term—is accompanied by a salad of ribbony fennel and little segments of orange. There’s not a whole lot going on here—there’s nothing particularly special about it, that’s for sure—but the ingredients are fresh enough and we’ve still go our mains to look forward to. Right?
My wet-roasted capretto ($32) looks like something dug up from undergrowth behind the shed and thrown into the oven until it more closely resembles something edible: charred pieces of ribcage and others grizzly bits and pieces of baby goat, massive halves of porcini mushroom, and wilted pieces of cavolo nero, all positively drowning in stock (there’s supposed to be some chestnuts in there, too, but I’ll be blowed if I can find them). A small bowl of mashed potato ($6) is suggested as an appropriate side dish: a creamy purée of spud and butter, with a bright yellow puddle on top to help you with that heart attack you’ve been working on, fails to soak up the swimming pool of cooking liquid, but rather breaks up and floats around on top of it like a minor oil slick. It’s all a bit unpleasant, to be honest, especially for a card-carrying goat-lover like myself.
The brined baby roast chicken ($32) is a more successful offering. The brine serves as an all-pervasive seasoning and the chicken is impressively succulent. But let’s face it, even at best this remains a glorified serving of chicken and chips, and with everything on the plate appearing the some golden brown colour, it’s all a little bland-looking as well. We order a side dish of green beans with salmoriglio to add a bit of colour to the plate ($8). But neither of us can taste the salmoriglio and without it the beans are devoid of interest.
Guy Grossi’s son, Carlo, who readily admits to being the spitting image of his father, plays sommelier for the evening and comes up with some really interesting suggestions. The 2004 Hochkirch ‘Maximus’ Pinot Noir ($60), a certified bio-dynamic label from Tarrington in Victoria, is an excellent foil to the game in the omelette and to my partner’s chicken. A glass of De Bortoli ‘Black Noble’ ($9.50 per glass) from the Riverina, made from botryised semillion, is one of the more interesting dessert wines I’ve had.
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Dessert is at once both the evening’s biggest letdown and its saving grace. Mine is apparently a mocha soufflé ($16) but, listless and uninspiring in the mouth, it tastes like approximately nothing. The generous but sad-looking orb of ice cream to the side is supposed to taste like sherry, but the flavour is so close to nonexistent that my mouth has to send out a search party to find it.
By comparison, my partner’s über-retro bombe glacèe ($16) is hands down the best dish of the night: a fluffy white molehill of Italian meringue, sculpted around the best vanilla ice-cream I’ve ever tasted, it’s completed by an almost imperceptible vein of cherry gelato running through its centre. Meticulously crafted—the blowtorched swirls on the face of meringue evoke the capricious lines of the art on the walls—the bombe, from its impish, cowlicked peak to its base, is the closest we’ve come all evening to pure pleasure on a plate.
The dining room at Mirka is undoubtedly one of the finest in Melbourne. The restaurant’s sense of history, of family, of occasion, is all pervasive and infectious. The excessive branding—the Grossi crest appears on everything from the plates to the cutlery to the glasses—is a little over-the-top and tacky, but for the most part, knives and forks aside, the atmosphere is positively electric. The wait staff are both personable and attentive, and the wine list, with both local and international labels well represented, will have you flipping excitedly from Arneis to Zinfandel and back again. It’s just a shame about the food, which could and should be so much more. Someone once said that you can’t eat a view. Mirka expects you to eat a mural.
The Scene, 4 July 2007
