Who:
Attica – the Chef’s Table-featuring, delicious.100 top 10 mainstay, World’s 50 Best Restaurants hog and all-round champion of native ingredients and storytelling food.

Why:
Attica is for most people a once-in-a-lifetime event. Call it a silver lining during these corona crisis dark days, but Ben Shewry’s world-famous fare is now available in affordable three-course form.

Pick-up or delivery?
Delivery ($15) by uniformed staff is available to suburbs within a 10-kilometre radius, with expanded “guest areas” coming soon; pick-up from the Ripponlea restaurant is from 5pm nightly.

The lowdown:
There are two three-course menus offered: classics and modern.

For the classics, Shewry has resurrected the restaurant’s famous A Simple Dish of Potato Cooked in the Earth it was Grown (a nod to the New Zealand hangi-style cooking of Shewry’s childhood) where a whole potato is served on tangy curd and topped with crunchy saltbush leaves. It’s easy to assemble at home and travels well.

As does a generous oblong of excellent slow-cooked lamb that comes in a punchy native pepper and spice crust, stickily decadent mash, braised spinach with pine nuts and a deeply rich lamb jus to drizzle alongside.

To finish, a trifle version of the restaurant’s Plight of the Bees dessert – creamy curd, honey, raspberries and a few pumpkin matchsticks – is pitch perfect.

Perhaps even better, there’s Ben Shewry’s Family Meal that teams terrific, béchamel-rich lasagne with pull-apart garlic bread and a lovely little leaf salad with a mustard-seed dressing.

For those reminiscing about a more recent meal, Attica’s modern hero dishes include All Parts of the Pumpkin, seared kangaroo with saltbush, and Elaine Shewry’s chocolate cake to finish.

You can also prepare for (another) movie night with a tub of buttermilk ice-cream with bush apple swirled through the sweet-sharp creaminess, which is as adult a pleasure you’d imagine Attica ice-cream to be.

Oh, and did someone say cheesecake? A baked cheesecake made of mascarpone, pouring cream and cream cheese is truly as decadent as that sounds.

Something to drink?
Attica’s head somm, Dom Robinson, is delving into the worldly cellar and offers a perfectly paired white or red to go with – either a $45 beauty or something rather more posh for $85. There are also cocktails and mixed four-packs of beer.

Price:
Both classics and modern menus are $95 for two people (pick-up or add $15 for delivery), the family meal for two is $60, and the ice-cream is $25 a tub (with handmade waffle cones also available), while the cheesecake is $70 and the Attica celebration cake is $80; both easily serve eight.

Order up:
The Attica Soup Project is a pro bono initiative by Shewry and food writer Dani Valent to help hospitality workers on temporary visas. A Thai-inspired chicken broth for “lunch the next day” is offered as a $25 add-on to any dinner order, with $5 going towards making soup to give to those who are unemployed and unable to access government support.

Where:
Attica, 74 Glen Eira Rd, Ripponlea, Vic, attica.com.au/delivery