I have had a couple of food experiences like this of late, the build-up, the anticipation...and...the disappointment. Hartsyard is inconspicuously positioned on Enmore Road and if you blinked you might miss it. That's the thing with trendy suburban dining these days they don't need the harbour views or the neon lights, just a SMH 1 Chef's Hat which does all the talking. At our 5:30pm booking the place was full. The occasion - BFR's Birthday, plus Pa Kettle and The Grifter were celebrating their Ruby Anniversary.
So let's talk about the food. The menu is "Seed and Feed" a shared eating style that is now typical of many eateries. The seed side of the menu are smaller dishes, and the feed side are larger style servings. What frustrates me about this type of dining is it kind of only works for 2 or 4 diners. Any more than that and the portions aren't right and the food is difficult to portion. From the Seeds menu we ordered the Fremantle octopus and popcorn prawns which came out in a brown paper bag replete with...wait for it...popcorn. Is it misleading to call a dish popcorn prawns if it literally contains popcorn rather than just being a play on words? Probably not. But let me just say, paying $20.00 for a brown paper bag with a ratio of popcorn to prawn of about 20:1, is not my idea of 1-hatted dining, however quirky the idea may be. If I wanted popcorn for dinner I could have headed to Hoyts, paid less, and got a movie and a choc-top thrown in too. The Nappa cabbage was probably the dish of the night - a wedge of cabbage, each layer liberally smeared with a mix of tahini, soy, and cashew butter, and sprinkled with a cashew and sesame seed blend and topped with dried seaweed. It was refreshing and light, and for a brief moment in time I was hopeful about the remainder of the meal.And that's where the happiness equation kicked in. We went on to order dishes from the "Feed" menu a serve of poutine with short-rib gravy and cheddar-beer sauce, fried chicken with sausage gravy, scallops and smoked chicken with BBQ chips, cauliflower with smoked raisins, and smoked mustard BBQ lamb ribs. Firstly, there is too much smokin' goin on (and not the Bob Marley kind). The mouth taste and feel after eating the smoked meats was similar to downing a shot glass of pure liquid smoke and my mouth was left feeling like the cavity of a Bradley Smoker long after I'd finished eating. On top of this every dish we ate was super rich and calorific to the point of being nauseating.
Dessert however promised an upward spiral Willie-Wonka type experience with the likes of peanut butter banana sundae with pretzel ice-cream a banana doughnut and salted fudge on the menu. At this stage of contemplation, we were confronted with a Nazi-like reminder from our waiter that our booking was only to 7:30pm and that our table would be required to be turned over for the next booking. That's all fine, but for the fact it was only 7:05pm at the time. I am not sure if the hurry-on was needed or appreciated, and in fact pushed us towards declining dessert.
For me Hartsyard is one of those eateries riding off the back of the hipster train...our current obsession with American style food. But that's where I think Hartsyard misses the point. American food is comforting and uncomplicated (think mac 'n' cheese), cheap, with serving sizes large enough to feed a small impoverished nation. American diner food is not a Chevrolet trying to be a Porsche, it's the reason more than one-third of U.S adults have to thank for being fat, not for how much lighter their wallet feels at the end of the night.
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