Head chef Mirco Ruthoff lets the seasons guide the menu at Eden Dining Room & Bar in Glenelg, but as he explains in this Q&A, this innovative venue isn’t just about the food.
What is your approach to the development of the menu at Eden?
My menus are always seasonal. I start by looking at what produce is coming into season and what techniques would best suit those ingredients, trying to incorporate some under-used ingredients where I can. I then draft and sample dishes until I have a cohesive menu. Our menu is contemporary Australian, but we take influence from all worldly cuisines.
What seasonal ingredient are you enjoying cooking with at the moment?
I’m particularly enjoying working with citrus at the moment. Radishes are also one of my favourite ingredients. We’re currently serving a sticky pork belly dish, with watermelon radish and a nashi pear rojak [fruit and vegetable salad].
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Where do you source your ingredients from?
We try to source all our ingredients locally, working with suppliers to ensure we have the best-quality products. Occasionally we source selected specialty products from afar. We currently grow herbs in our garden beds surrounding the outdoor terraces and we are about to build an aquaponics system to grow leafy greens such as kale, chard and spinach.
How would you use the seasonal produce at home?
I have some Jerusalem artichokes growing in our garden, which make a great risotto with a touch of preserved lemon. I’m also loving brussel sprouts, simply roasted with bacon.
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I noticed Eden had a pop-up winery. Can you tell us a bit about it? When can we drink the end result?
Chad [owner Chad Hanson] led the Eden crew and friends on what can now only be described as an epic journey to pick some grapes and make some wine. The day was full of calamities and the grapes didn’t look like they were going to make it to the restaurant at one stage but, with the guidance of Taras Ochota from Ochota Barrels, the wine is starting to look pretty sharp! Customers were invited to help pick, stomp, plunge and press the grapes during the process. The grapes were hand-picked, bucket-line transported, foot-stomped, wild-yeast and whole-bunch-fermented, hand-plunged, basket-pressed and will eventually be hand-bottled, labelled, numbered and wax sealed all on-site at Eden. Keep an eye out for “The Cluster” 2013 Single Barrel Adelaide Hills Syrah towards the end of the year or early 2014.
What is the blending room?
The wine blending room is our temperature-controlled walk-in wine cellar that doubles as a winery cellar door/laboratory. We have eight stainless-steel wine storage tanks hooked up to an argon gas system that can each hold up to 100 litres of wine. Through Chad’s relationships with local winemakers, we purchase wine direct from the barrel for our tanks. Customers can take a tasting flight through the different varieties or the more adventurous can try creating their own personal blend based on their own palate or local winemaker’s recommendations.
Do you make any other liquors, syrups, etc, on-site?
The bar staff are currently making a number of stock syrups, shrubs (an ancient method or preserving stone fruit), bitters, falernum, dram, pastis, bottle-fashioned clarified milk punch and basil sous-vide gin, and they are just about to start barrel-ageing and bottle-ageing cocktails. We are constantly working on new flavour matches, ingredients and techniques, with the guys always trying to stay on-trend with the eastern states.
