Opinion
It would be nice if more restaurants made non-drinkers feel welcome, too
Lee Tulloch
Travel columnistThe festive season is upon us, which means the champagne corks are popping.
Perhaps not as popping as other years, because there’s a mild shortage of the French bubbly due to ongoing supply issues following the pandemic. But that won’t dampen anyone’s spirits – Australians are the sixth biggest market for champagne in the world and the fifth highest alcohol consumers internationally.
The Agrarian Kitchen … wooing non-drinkers as well as wine buffs.
Me? I’ll be unscrewing the lids off a few bottles of kombucha. I’ve never been much of a drinker and these days it has dwindled to hardly at all. I’ll have the rare perfectly balanced cocktail if I’m at a great bar and I’m in the mood, and I’ve never said no to one glass of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne.
But it’s quality over quantity these days. I usually stick to water.
Standing around at a party with a glass of water is not particularly festive, though. And the “mocktails” you are offered are often too sweet, despite the increased availability of non-alcoholic spirits such as Lyre’s and Seedlip, which can successfully imitate G+Ts and margaritas. The worst ones remind me of the disgusting kids’ drink called a Shirley Temple (Grenadine syrup and lemonade with Maraschino cherries).
Cocktail Zero Alcohol, maximum flavour. Credit: Peter Mathew
There’s also another problem. Most degustation menus have matching wines, and it’s boring watching everyone else’s glasses fill up with interesting vintages, even if I don’t feel like drinking them. I’d always wished that restaurants thought more about the growing numbers of people who don’t or can’t consume alcohol.
Which is why I am completely surprised and delighted to find a degustation menu of non-alcoholic drinks accompanying the set lunch menu at The Agrarian Kitchen, in New Norfolk, Tasmania. My companion drinks some delicious Tasmanian wine, but I think I have the better part of the deal.
I’d always wanted to visit this lauded restaurant and cooking school about 40 minutes outside Hobart, but I hadn’t managed it. When Hobart’s harbour-side hotel, The Tasman, invited me to experience its new Agrarian Kitchen package, which includes one night’s stay at the Luxury Collection hotel, breakfast, lunch at the Agrarian Kitchen, a garden tour and cookbook, plus transfers, I jumped on a plane. I didn’t need much convincing.
The drive from Hobart in a chauffeured car takes us through damp but pretty countryside. First up, there’s a tour of the flourishing, high-walled organic garden with Rodney Dunn who, with partner Severine Demanet, established the original Agrarian Kitchen in a schoolhouse in nearby Lachlan, moving to the larger property when the Bronte House of the old psychiatric asylum in New Norfolk became available. Now there’s a casual kiosk on the grounds as well as the fire-lit restaurant and shiny new kitchen of the cooking school.
Other restaurants should follow the Agrarian Kitchen in providing choice for non-drinkers.
But back to those sublime cocktails. Produced from what the beverage manager forages from the restaurant’s own organic garden and waste from the kitchen, the ingredients are fermented and brewed in large jars, some stored in the restaurant’s hallways like medical experiments.
Everyone justifiably raves about the food, but I can’t stop talking about the drinks.
When the cocktails arrive at the table, they’re not murky fermentations, but things of beauty, distilled to their essences. A blend of fig leaf, peach and magnolia is clear as water, but the flavour is intense.
Each dish, whether it be as snow peas, parsley and fermented lemon or salty Cotechino with asparagus and peas, is complemented by another wonderful drink – Royal Gala apple and garden herbs, Jasmine pearl and green tea kombucha, Mariposa blood plum and sour cherry, and burnt citrus chinotto.
Given that lunches at the Agrarian Kitchen involve a car ride, the non-alcoholic menu is created with designated drivers in mind. But it’s an unexpected boon for people who want a bit more wow than water with their meals.
The organic produce, the farm-to-table and celebrate-local philosophy, and inventive ways to reuse waste – the Agrarian Kitchen puts the sexy in sustainability. Make sure you book a garden tour when you visit, so you can see what you eat and drink growing on the vine. It’s an important part of the experience.
I’m hoping other restaurants will start thinking more inventively about what they pair with dishes for people who don’t drink alcohol. It doesn’t have to be as elaborate and time-consuming as the brews in New Norfolk.
But something to make us feel welcome, part of the party, would be nice.
The writer was a guest of The Tasman and The Agrarian Kitchen.
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