The Long Table at Red Hill

Following our meal at Max's Restaurant, we checked out of the Woodman Estate the very next day and took a slow drive to Red Hill where we had lunch booked in at The Long Table. 

The menu was easy and straight forward, you either go for the 6 courses tasting menu or the 2-3 courses ala carte menu. The Boyfriend wasn't too keen on a heavy meal so we settled with just 2 courses.

For entree, the boyfriend had the blue swimmer crab roll, fennel, sweetcorn mayonnaise and chicken skins.

I shamelessly took a generous piece of the crab roll to taste - man, it was divine and well-paired with the sweetcorn mayo.

The chicken skin I could hear, has a nice crispy texture, as it went *crunch, crunch* as the Boyfriend bit into them. He gave me a look as though to say, "Hmmm, yum!"

I, on the other hand, opted for the marinated yellowfin tuna served with smoked shallots, shimeji mushrooms atop dashi broth. 

This dish is very Japanese inspired, as you can already tell from the mix of ingredients. Put simply, it was like having tuna with miso soup, well sort of.

Not complaining though, it was good nevertheless and quite a light start to the meal. The watermelon gave a nice refreshing touch to the dish too.

For mains, we had the grass fed aged sirloin, served alongside king browns, radish pods, shallots and BBQ sauce.

The meat was cooked medium rare; but it wasn't as tender and flavoursome as we expected it to be. It was as though something was missing from the dish, but we couldn't quite pinpoint what.

It was rather odd that the steak was served with BBQ sauce. We didn't think both elements went quite too well together, not to our liking at least.

We also had the Otway pork belly and neck served with toffee apple sauce alongside black pudding and baby leeks.

I loved the pork neck, the meat was so tender and juicy. One word - divine! I wished if only we were served with a bigger piece.

I'm not too big a fan of pork belly as it was a little too fat for my liking, but the Boyfriend, on the other hand, liked it.

The pork went really well with the apple sauce I'd say, but we barely touched the black pudding. I took a small bite, and I didn't enjoy it at all. The thought of it being dried blood... yikes!

All in all, I think the food and atmosphere here is brilliant! I'd highly recommend you give the $65 tasting menu a go. Only an additional $15 for 6 courses. That's good value for money, me thinks! ;)

Service was also great and friendly, but the only downside was that whilst the waitstaff tried to be as attentive as they could, I think they are understaffed, especially with a busy full house.

There were only 2-3 wait staff and you could tell they were running about frantically, trying to attend to everyone's needs. Seated at the corner, we had to wait for quite a bit just to catch the attention of the staff. But otherwise, excellent!