Dining in Style - The Queen Adelaide Restaurant on "The Ghan" Transcontinental Train (Day 2)

Monday 31 December 2012
Brunch (mid-morning)

This began with a glass of fruit juice, followed by a fruit-based starter (or cereal) and then a wide choice of main meals, toast with accompaniments, tea or coffee.

The Wild Peach and Vanilla Parfait was lovely, consisting of succulent and sweet semi-stewed fruit with passionfuit, vanilla yoghurt, sliced almonds, hazlenuts and topped with a mint leaf.

The Full Breakfast was fairly traditional but not an overly large serving. It contained a slice of bacon, a small country sausage, half a grilled tomato, one champignon and a choice of eggs (poached, fried, scrambled).

There was a selection of toasted breads and toppings - butter or Beerenberg marmalade, honey, apricot and strawberry jams.

All very pleasant, but whether it was quite enough to tide us over until dinner remained to be seen.

Dinner (19:15) 

The menu choices were exactly the same as the previous evening. The only difference was that instead of broccoli, chopped cooked red cabbage was served with the main meals.

I decided to try a different entree, and ordered the Haloumi Grilled Mushroom. This was a combination of a large brown mushroom, basil, sun-blushed tomato (still fairly soft), haloumi cheese, greens, caramellised bush tomatoes and balsamic syrup and a kalamata olive crumble. The mushroom was pretty bland and the crumble was dry. The tomato was nice and sweet but the sauce was quite acidic. Overall I didn't find the dish very appetising.

 At home I am not a big meat eater, and after the past few days I was looking forward to something a bit lighter so turned to fish, which is probably my favourite form of protein. The Grilled Saltwater Barramundi consisted of a small piece of filleted barramundi with crispy cracked peppercorn coated skin on top. It was delightfully moist, flaky and tasty and could not have been cooked any better. The ubiquitous pancetta made another appearance on top of this dish. The fresh leaves of baby spinach were accompanied by a bland and disappointing cauliflower and horseradish puree and an interesting salty mixture of citrus, caviar and lemon oil.

I did contemplate having the apple tart for dessert this time, but was not persuaded that it looked appetising enough to forsake the chocolate pudding for dessert. This was still excellent on a second tasting, and the presence of the dried fruit and berries inside the cake really adds depth to the flavour.

That the kitchen is consistently able to turn out such a high standard of food in challenging circumstances is quite amazing, but I cannot help feeling that some of the dishes have been 'over-thought', with too many competing flavours (at times resulting in some "weird food" aspects), and there is only so much pancetta that you wish to see featuring as a component of menu choices. It would also be good to see a greater emphasis on vegetables as a balanced part of the main dishes as opposed to 'meat and potatoes', and perhaps some Asian-inspired dishes as this is such a significant part of Australian food culture. That said, it would not be appropriate to complain too much, as the restaurant team has done an excellent job despite the constraints and consistently demonstrated exemplary service.