Meat and Wine Co, Hawthorn East by Obelix

It's been awhile since P and I have double dated and for this occasion as rare as a blue moon, our friends J and K arranged for us to have dinner at Meat and Wine Co in Hawthorn East followed by port and dessert back at home. Very civilised.

The Meat and Wine Co in Hawthorn East is actually situated at the end of Camberwell junction in a renovated ye olde former bank. It has a warm ambience of dark woods which complemented the rustic features.

It would be churlish to go to a place like this and not have meat. So meat it was! Apart from the bruschetta starter which J and K shared between themselves, it was a meat-centric meal.

P led the way with a full rack of ribs with a side of chips and mushroom sauce. He made short work of it.

I was more inclined to go for the magnificent dangling skewers. As roo meat has always proven difficult for me to cook (I tend to overcook it), I was interested to see whether I would be presented with leathery hide on a metal skewer. But thankfully it wasn't. It was a delicious medium rare and tender. A slightly tangy marinade made with bush herbs was a lovely accompaniment. As was the onion rings and chat potatoes. Yum!

Eye fillet with salad

J and K both went for the 200g grain fed eye fillet. One of them went with the house salad as the side and the other chose the chips.

In order to feel like I ate some greenage, I chose the chickpea salad as a side. It was fresh with parsley, cucumber and avocado to counter the nutty density of the chickpeas.

J sipped on a mocktail with dinner whilst P tried one of the apple ciders.

Apple cider

A heads up: on a Saturday night, the condition of the booking required us to eat within 2 hours. Whilst I don't mind eating to a deadline (2 hours being quite a generous stretch of time), I felt that the staff did not pace us well in terms of bringing dessert menu, clearing the main plates in a timely manner. The net effect was that 15 minutes prior to our deadline to scuttle, we were placing our dessert orders only to be told we didn't have time to eat it.

The Bureaucrat previously visited the Southbank Meat and Wine Co.