SA’s best steak is in the middle of nowhere
Set on a farm overlooking paddocks of grazing cattle with distant views of Canunda National Park and the sand dunes of the Limestone Coast is The Tasting Room – South Australia’s best steak restaurant.
It is located at Mayura Station, the first pastoral lease in South Australia, 400km from Adelaide.
This is no picnic spot.
Mayura Station is an award-winning beef producer with one of Australia’s largest Wagyu herds, and The Tasting Room – this week named “Best Steak Formal” restaurant at the 2014 Restaurant and Catering Association (SA) Awards – is a high-end restaurant that was purpose-built by the de Bruin family in 2010 to showcase their product.
Wagyu is said to be the world’s best beef, and Mayura Station has been named as one of the world’s best producers.
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“But people don’t know if Wagyu is a breed of beef, a cut of beef or a style of finishing cattle,” says owner Scott de Bruin. “The Tasting Room is an opportunity for us to educate them.”
Wagyu are Japanese beef cattle bred for their high-quality, intensely marbled meat. Marbling refers to the striations of fat running through the muscle tissue. “When cooking, those fats melt and disperse through the meat, leaving a beautiful flavour and juicy texture,” says de Bruin.
The Tasting Room menu is a set three or four courses with dessert or cheese platter options. Most of the wine and produce comes from the Limestone Coast.
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“We offer a unique, interactive tasting experience, much like a cellar door,” explains de Bruin. “The chef, Mark Wright, walks people through the different cuts of Wagyu, the best way to cook it and the history of Wagyu.”
Don’t be put off by the use of the word “formal” in the award title. “The Tasting Room is not silver service,” says de Bruin. “It’s a relaxed atmosphere with a large open-plan bar and grill. I guess the word ‘formal’ distinguishes us from a steak-house.”
![Chef Plating close with Rymill Guests by John Kruger (1)[1]](https://wp.indaily.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Chef-Plating-close-with-Rymill-Guests-by-John-Kruger-11.jpg)
While the serves of beef in each course are as small as 80 to 150 grams, another reason de Bruin needs to focus on education is that Wagyu beef’s high fat content goes against the grain of the lean beef marketing campaigns that have indoctrinated consumers’ minds over the last 30 years.
“Consumers have a bit of a concern about the level of marbling in Wagyu, but 100 per cent pure Wagyu is very high in omega-3 and omega-6, the good fatty acids,” he says. “It’s similar to deep-sea fish such as salmon and tuna.”
The Tasting Room is open for dinner on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, with luncheons by arrangement.
“Being 30 minutes from Mt Gambier and a half-hour drive from Coonawarra, we get a lot of tourists, but the majority of people come to us from Mt Gambier and the wider Limestone Coast and western Victoria,” says de Bruin. “We also get people coming from Melbourne with Rod Dyer’s Air Adventures on a charter plane out of Essenden Airport.”
It would be a good idea to arrange accommodation in nearby Millicent if you’re not from those parts.
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