Tanbah

While it sounds a bit like a place you'd go to get a fake tan, Tanbah http://www.tanbah.com.au is a newish venue in Felix street in the CBD. The feel is a little bit moody, with long swathes of curtains, subdued lighting and dark fixtures, but very cool. The kitchen is currently chef-heavy, with Mark Maric, former of Lure and a protege of Neil Perry's and Sian Bressoles who last worked at Stone. Bressoles is waiting to go to the new West End venture owned by the same people but the opening date keeps being put off (don't you just LOVE builders?. Anyway, with two accomplished head chefs in the kitchen, you can be guarenteed of getting a good meal.

The menu is modern Asian, a cuisine I've always thought suits our Queensland lifestyle particularly well. An amuse bouche of succulent prawn topped with a deep-fried beetle leaf and a tiny wonton cup with a delicate runny sate sauce was apparently made by the twenty year old apprentice who is obviously a talented young lady and started the meal off on a high note.

As a main, I vacillated between the gold band snapper which came with a prawn dumpling, braised wombok & soy chilli broth but in the end went for the Roasted duck breast with Asian mushrooms, asparagus, lup cheung & chilli caramel sauce while my companion had the spatchcock. Both were lovely, I'm a big fan of exotic mushrooms and of course the sweet-savoury-spicy balance of Asian flavours goes so beautifully with duck.

The dessert too have an Asian accent, pandan creme brulee and Wolf berry creamed rice, palm sugar crust with dragon sorbet. Apparently wolf berry is some kind of dried berry from Asia, slightly tart. It was hard to decide, so we didn't, we had it all, in a sharing plate that also included Passionfruit & chocolate tarte with a Szechuan pepper tuille and sticky banana & coconut pudding with wild honey parfait as well as a Ginger & mango tiramisu with vanilla bean cream.


All absolutely and wickedly divine, but perhaps a little ambitious on my part- it's against my principles to leave any dessert on the plate, but in this case, even with my lovely dining companion doing her share, it just couldn't be done.