Shed 5

Another day, another dégustation dinner. Shed 5 is the landmark Wellington restaurant of Masterchef New Zealand judge Simon Gault (he also owns Crab Shack and Pravda in the capital, as well as 5 other restaurants throughout the country), and specialises in seafood.

We arrived at 6:00pm and found our allocated table. As is almost inevitable in Wellington, there was someone at our table who Nicola knew through work. The waitress poured our Palliser Estate Methode Traditionelle, and after a short speech from the head chef, we were off on the first of 8 fish courses – Bluff oysters 3 ways: one natural, one poached and one tempura. All tasty – I liked the raw one best.

There were 8 courses in all, 4 of which could be styled as starters (including the oysters): tuna carpaccio, baby paua with twice-cooked pork belly, and scallop & salmon raviolo:

Baby paua with twice-cooked pork belly

Scallop and Akaroa salmon raviolo

...and two as main courses; one of which was cooked by Sushil Ravikumar, who reached the last 4 on Masterchef New Zealand this year and now works at Pravda. His course was a curried groper fillet with a raita sphere (this involved science, which was explained by head chef Geoff Ngan), mango chutney and spinach, served with a prawn and potato croquette. He demonstrated the cooking techniques and answered questions about cooking and Masterchef.

Sushil Ravikumar demonstrates his cooking skills

The final main course was a surf-and-turf of Angus eye fillet with crayfish and paddle crab thermidor.

Wines were matched throughout from Palliser Estate,  including their Pencarrow pinot noir with the steak.

Nearly there! Just the dessert (a marshmallow mandarin and chocolate sphere) with mulled wine, and finally a parmesan and honeycomb “cigar”, stuffed with gorgonzola, and served with tawny port.

The whole meal kept us up past 11 o’clock, and we left feeling slightly woozy (they’d been generous with the wine servings) and also quite full. To be honest, they could’ve got away with only serving one main course – I guess they just have so much good food, and so much good cooking, that they want to fit in as much as possible! It’s a good job this only comes around once a year.

We have one more event to go to next week, but I’m continuing on my burger adventures in the meanwhile – which will include a trip further afield this weekend.