Nuriootpa SA. May 20 2018

Easy sort of run across from Mildura, but we were both surprised by the Quarantine Station on the South Australian border, we had both become so focussed on the stations as you cross into Western Australia, that we had completely forgotten about this one! I looked up our previous crossing and it seems we had the same brain fade in 2012! The noticeable difference this year was that vegetables such as potato and sweet potato were given the all clear, yet strawberries, apples, pears and bananas all got the chop and were all confiscated. Rats.

Still, we made it into Nuriootpa early enough to have time to take a late lunch at Maggie Beers, but too late to take Devonshire Tea at Colligrove House over in Angaston. So out to Maggie's we went just in time to be told lunch was off in the main shop, but if we hurried we might get a feed in the brand-new restaurant just outside. Last time we were here it was still being built, but inside is an nice restaurant and a large cooking school.

Two million dollar restaurant and cooking school. $5 bin from Bunnings. Maggie Beer's Nuriootpa SA

Restaurant and cooking school. Maggie Beer's Nuriootpa SA

We felt a bit out of place: it being Sunday afternoon the place was a-buzz with the clever-set from Adelaide, but it was the menu that had us scratching our heads, and wondering if we had missed something in the last 20 years. The menu simply listed items such as, 'prosciutto, pickled fennel, fresh ricotta', which doesn't sound much like a meal to me. The nice waitress girl could not elaborate, except to advise us that the ricotta was made fresh here on the farm. The pizza looked good as they were being brought to tables around us, so I ordered the only one that sounded like a pizza, 'salami, honey, verjuice, tomato sugo', and Judy opted for the prosciutto but added a. 'house made ciabatta and cultured butter'. There, I knew we were in the right place, even the butter is cultured...

I also added the farm made shiraz cabernet for fortitude and Judy opted for the pear cider.

We shouldn't have worried as the food was excellent and the wine more than moderately drinkable.

Oddly enough though, you can't get a coffee with the meal, you have to go back inside the Farm Shop for that, and while you're there you may as well peruse all that the Maggie Beer enterprise has to offer in the way of cooking condiments and  indulgent ingredients. They all looked, smelt and tasted rather 'odd', so we grabbed a chocolate mousse and an affogato ice-cream to have later.

I have to mention too that the weather is cold and grey and the wind is chilled to -10℃ or something, so after filling the car up and buying some groceries, we headed back to the van to rug-up and settle down with a hot cuppa and the last of the banana cake.