Sprout Cafe, Auchenflower

No, there are no pics. I'm a very very bad blogger- my camera is rarely in my bag and I feel sort of embarressed about taking pics of plates in public- sort of like I'm some kind of perv. Or one of those rude people who use their mobiles in a restaurant. So you'll just have to use your imagination.
- Sit comfortably. Imagine the barest whiff of cinnamon. Now add the smell of some rich braised beef cheek, cooked until fall- off- with- a fork-prod tender. A delicate little Asian broth, scented I think with ginger, and perhaps some star anise-a nest of rice noodles, slippery on the fork. Another dish of rich, crispy/cloud-soft pork belly, its unctuousness cut through with some a tangy touch- of- acid pineapple and green onion salsa..
A braised rabbit leg, a little smokiness given by pancetta. Shitake mushrooms and a rich-stocked white bean cassoulet, the whole thing smelling like you'd imagine something that would emanate from a snow covered hunters lodge in the middle of a forest.

Sprout is pretty local to me and I've been quite a few times over the years and fallen in and out of love. On the last occasion we had a bit of a lovers tiff frankly- the food was lacklustre but last night I rekindled our relationship. I was actually feeling like shit with a red nose, hacking cough headachey sort of cold and didn't want to go out at all, but this was my next to last review of the year and just had to be done.I stopped at Chalk and Cheese bottle shop and asked them to recommend a 'cold-killing red for around $25' as Sprout is BYO and they suggested a Langhorne Creek Brothers in Arms no. 6 2004 Shiraz-cabernet. It worked well with the beef and went a good way towards curing my cold, -I polished off the rest of the bottle tonight and feel better already.

The lessons for me were this-
1.Experimenting with new places is one thing, but sometimes a more established place you may normally overlook can come up with the goods
2. We expect a lot from restaurants. How many of us in our jobs do it perfectly everytime? It's worth giving restaurants a couple of goes- sometimes shit just happens, even in the best run kitchens.