Gauge has firmly established itself as the measure of integrity and innovation in Brisbane’s casual dining scene.
It’s just over a year since Gauge quietly but confidently opened its doors in Brisbane’s shiny new Fish Lane precinct, without so much as a website, Facebook page or a skerrick of signage heralding its arrival.
A year on, there’s still no website, not even a telephone number. The latter is not by design – despite popular belief. Owner Jerome Batten laughs off suggestions that the place is too pretentious to have a phone. “We’d love to have a phone,” he says.
Batten has not let issues with telecommunications – or the naysayers – distract him from achieving his goal of taking casual food to a whole new realm in these parts.
It looks a lot like a café, but that’s where the similarity ends. The décor is spare, with accents of leather, brass and timber. The beautiful crockery is handmade in Queensland. The wine list is short, but very carefully curated. Front-of-house service rivals many high-end restaurants in town. Beyond the cafe façade is a deep respect for produce, boundless creativity and the kind of integrity that usually comes at a hefty price. When it comes together – and mostly it does – it is a magical thing. Blood tacos, with their bone marrow, mushroom and native thyme filling are a case in point. Photogenic they are not, but what they lack in #foodporn potential, they more than make up for in the flavor stakes.
Hidden inside deep-purple-hued charred radicchio leaves are little squares of raw king fish interspersed with pickled quandong, and a hint of fennel tips. The charring process has coaxed an unexpected sweetness from the radicchio – which adds a subtle complexity of flavors while still allowing the fish to remain the star of the dish.
How humble roasted corn kernels can be transformed into such an epic dish is wonderfully confounding; the kernels retain their crunch – the natural sweetness enhanced by a touch of smokiness from the roasting and perfectly paired with fermented chili and the umami of bone marrow. Like most of the dishes – the unpretentious presentation belies the intricacy of the execution.
There are a couple of dishes that are not as impressive. Silken almond tofu with eggplant, caper leaf and elderflower feels like a work in progress. The eggplant accompanying the silken almond tofu does not quite commit to its promised smokiness, leaving the flavor of the caper leaves to dominate. Fresh spanner crab on chestnut cream with pomelo comes close to the ideal, topped with wisps of fresh chestnut, but the pomelo pearls don’t deliver the anticipated juicy, acidic-sweet pop.
The magic returns with a dish of perfectly pink slow-cooked lamb neck with Warrigal greens, turnip and green mustard puree, however. It is meat-and-three-veg at its most sophisticated.
Guaranteed to end the whole experience on a high is that garlic bread. The menu may have changed more times than most menus in their first year, but the one constant is the fermented black garlic bread – the dish that got everyone talking remains firmly on the menu, having become something of a signature. On the subject of whether it’s a sweet or savoury dish, well apparently the jury is still out. Earthy and deeply satisfying, the treacley slab of fermented bread, with its subtle notes of garlic, burnt vanilla – served with brown butter, has occupied a spot in various sections of the menu, and become a permanent fixture on the breakfast menu.
Just as Gauge itself has become a favourite of those who like their cafes a little less ordinary.
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