Joanna had a lot of (Silere) lamb (at Hummingbird)

A couple of weeks ago, I went for din­ner at Hum­ming­bird, and as well as eat­ing fish tacos with my girl­friend (oh grow up!), we ordered the Lamb for Two.

What we got was lamb shank with couscous, char­grilled flat­breads, the cream­i­est hum­mus ever, baba gan­oush, some pickles and the most amaz­ingly tender and fla­vour­some slow cooked lamb shoulder. Hon­estly, the shoulder tasted like the lamb had eaten all the oth­er lambs in the world, that’s how intense the fla­vour was. It was out­stand­ing. I have since learned that the reas­on the shoulder tasted so amaz­ing (apart from being cooked so expertly) was because it was Silere Merino.

“The nat­ur­al, for­aging life­style of the Merino and the influ­ence of their high coun­try envir­on­ment cre­ate defined fla­vours in the meat, along with a silky-smooth tex­ture, suc­cu­lence and appeal­ing dens­ity. Din­ing on SILERE alpine ori­gin merino is to exper­i­ence taste elev­ated.”

What this means is that you get all the fla­vour without any of that greasy mouth feel lamb can some­times have.  Hum­ming­bird’s lamb for two was $75, I think, and totally worth it. Frankly, with a side of the most amaz­ing roast pota­toes ever, it would hap­pily be lamb for three. If you like lamb, you should def­in­itely go and try it for yourselves. You can also order a vari­ety of cuts of lamb on the Silere web­site to cook it for your­self, as I’m look­ing for­ward to try­ing. It won’t be the cheapest meat you ever buy,  but it might just be one of the best.

I could­n’t stop think­ing about how good it was, so ima­gine my hap­pi­ness when Hum­ming­bird’s chef invited me to a Silere degust­a­tion match­ing six courses with Nautilus Estate pinot noir last week.

I’ll put the menu here, then I’ll hide the rest of the pic­tures under a jump cut for those of you who don’t think you’ll be able to handle the jeal­ousy.

We (a mix of old media with pen & paper, new media with Ins­tagram and big­ger appet­ites, and hos­pit­al­ity insiders) were led down to the kit­chen table under­neath Bettys [sic], where we got to watch our food being cooked in front of us, hear about what we were eat­ing and drink­ing, and ask ques­tions as we went along.

Fil­let, oyster cream, cucum­ber, dill, rye served with Nautilus Cuvee Mal­bor­ough Brut NV
The first course was fil­let served with fla­vours like  steak tartare,  topped with an oyster cream that made me real­ise that I do actu­ally like the taste of oysters, but not their tex­ture. The Silere branded stones on the table were excep­tion­ally pop­u­lar with the diners too, being great to fid­get with between courses.  The Nautilus bub­bly was a lovely wine to start with as well.

Sweet­bread, sal­mon, beet, cheese, horseradish served with Nautilus Mal­bor­ough Pinot Noir 2010
I had nev­er had sweet­breads before this, and when I saw them on the menu all I could think about was Donna and Brenda in Par­is. Turns out I am an idi­ot (who knew?) because sweet­breads aren’t actu­ally brains. Glen described them as the best chick­en nug­gets ever, and I think that’s a pretty good descrip­tion. In fact, oth­ers around the table remin­ic­sed about how you used to be able to order crumbed sweet­breads at Homestead Chick­en. In the olden days. I’m wor­ried though that oth­er sweet­breads will pale in com­par­is­on to these mag­ni­fi­cent yums, so I don’t know if I’d order them any­where else.

Saddle, cray­fish, grains, rais­in, pomegranate, spice served with Nautilus Mal­bor­ough Pinot Noir 2009
This was the first time that I’ve ever had cray­fish, and it was firmer than I expec­ted it to be. The lamb saddle was suc­cu­lent, but I wish it was­n’t quite so lean because the tiny bit of fat on it was so deli­cious, I wanted more. I was also amazed at how juicy the rais­ins were, because usu­ally I curse their very exist­ence and mourn the wine they could have been.

Pot au feu, rack, belly, shoulder, car­rot, peas, served with Nautilus Mal­bor­ough Pinot Noir 2008
Did you know that the best way to clean a frenched bone (heh heh heh) is appar­ently with string? I pre­ferred to suck on mine. The car­rot cus­tard was as smooth as a Ryan Gos­ling meme, but I think the best part of this course was actu­ally the belly, because it incred­ibly rich and unc­tu­ous.

Shortrib, shal­lot, potato, BBQ, miso served with Nautilus Mal­bor­ough Pinot Noir 2007

My photo attempts at this dish com­pletely failed, which is a shame because it was served up on beau­ti­ful pohu­takawa boards that Hum­ming­bird will be using from now on for its char­cu­ter­ie, with a beau­ti­ful bright green puddle of spin­ach. The meat was gor­geously smoky, so luck­ily the ’07 Pinot Noir was up for the chal­lenge.

Par­fait, lem­on thyme, blue­berry, eld­er­flower
There were SO MANY beau­ti­ful things going on this plate (later on Twit­ter, Glen said “lem­on thyme, wood sor­rel, blue­berry, eld­er­flower, lilette, rasp­berry, fresh merino curd”) and yet some­how it all just worked.

What an amaz­ing even­ing. Obvi­ously it was a one-off I was incred­ibly lucky to be invited to, but you can go get the Lamb for Two at Hum­ming­bird, order Silere merino to cook for your­self, buy Nautilus in a bunch of places, or even book out the private din­ing room and ask them to recre­ate the whole even­ing for you. I bet they’d be up for the chal­lenge!