Maude Bistro Gentil - Wanaka New Zealand

 When a restaurant is recommended by a well known restauranteur you really need to check it out. And that is just what we did when Annie Mantell who started the award winning Auckland restaurant The French Cafe told us that it is a good place to go. 

Lucky for us we were only two doors down from the restaurant in Golf Course Rd in Wanaka staying in Mantells Luxury Accomodation (another tick for Mantell).

We were greeted and seated in the covered outside area of the restaurant. The seating situation was met with some trepidation by me as it was only 4 degrees celsius outside and likely to drop to 1 as the evening progressed. However there was nothing to worry about, the chairs had thick sheepskin draped over the backs and a patio heater blazed over our table.  We were very comfortable all night and the heat adjusted as needed.

I chose a Maude Poison Creek pinot noir from the three Maude pinots on offer. It was satisfyingly good and complemented my meal perfectly.

A complementary treat arrived to get us started, but alas we ate it before I could take a photo! A perfect silky dollop of pate on a crispy crouton and garnished beautifully disappeared in the wink of an eye.

Lance chose the French onion soup with a gruyere crouton for starters and I took the cranky goats cheese, honey, puffed buckwheat, beetroots and rocket.

The soup was hot hearty and delicious. You could tell that the onions had been slowly cooked and cared for by the sweetness that came through the thick soup. Lance was in heaven and I had a little taste so that I had some ammunition for the oniony repercussions that were sure to arrive later in the evening.

My Cranky goats cheese was ‘plate lickable’, I hadn’t expected a deep fried wedge of cheese along with the generous thickly smeared cheesy deliciousness under perfectly sliced beetroot, which cut nicely through the Richness of the cheese. The buckwheat offered a change of texture and a welcome crunch.

    

Our waitress was attentive and chatty enough to be sincere but not interrupt our evening together. And the clientele was made of tourists and a group of what appeared to be older locals enjoying a special evening out.

Lance’s main of 200g 55 day aged beef fillet with a red onion relish and an onion caramel that rivalled the onion soup, blue cheese butter and potato dauphines left him a very happy man. There was a moment that I thought he was going to succumb, but like the good Kiwi bloke that he is he stumbled, picked himself up and finished the job. The photo does not do this dish justice.

Myself ... I took charge of Te Mana lamb blackstrap, croquette, jerusalem artichoke, brown butter, comte cheese and some wafer like chips. The lamb was rare, tender and flavoursome, it was draped in a wafer thin slice of cheese and the brown butter added a richness to the jerusalem artichokes which were chopped in a rough fashion and roasted. The croquette was a surprise with what appeared to be slow roasted and shredded lamb encased in a crispy bread coating. The whole dish was delicious and very rich and I had to weigh up wether to finish it or leave room for desert. Anybody who knows me well will know what the answer to this dilemma had to be. Leave some and have desert. 

Before desert arrived we were spoiled with another treat, choux pastry puffs with cream cheese and I think she said fig jam. Biting into these was a surprise and the jam left a fizzy feeling on your tongue after the thick creamy texture of the cream cheese.

Desert was accompanied by a lovely fruity Pegasus Bay Noble Riesling. Lance had the vanilla creme brûlée, almond crumb and hokey pokey ice cream. And it beat him!

Sorry this is blurry, I feel a bit embarrassed taking photos of all the food, like I am one of ‘those’ people. And if you are one of ‘those’ people I apologise.

My desert was sublime and I ate every bit of the salted caramel bavarois, sous vide cooked apples, earl grey gel, crumbs and ice cream.  I was interested to try the sous vide apples as we have a sous vide at home and we have used it only for meat. I wondered what the point of difference would be in sous vide rather than poaching. The apples were perfectly cooked in wedges without any of the soft slushy texture that you may get with poached or roasted, they were firm but soft. I am not a fan of earl grey tea and the perfume flavour almost put me off ordering this desert, but the gel had just a hint of the perfume and went perfectly with the rest of the yummyness (new word, someone tell Oxford). 

We enjoyed a meal of very high standard and at what we thought was a very reasonable price of $248 without tip. In Auckland we would pay up to and maybe even above $400 for an evening like this.

Oh and the toilets were lovely. And another bonus was that we didn’t have to pay for an Uber. If you are in Wanaka you need to try Maude and you will have to book in advance.

Maude

Food - 5

Comfort - 5

Service - 5

Price - 3

Erynn’s Grading scale

Food 

1 - 2 Won’t be back

3 - 4  Might be back

  5     Can’t wait to get back

Comfort

1 - 2  Just stay for a quick bite

3 - 4  Okay for a medium price

  5     Could stay longer

Service

1 - 2  Lucky I don’t complain

3 - 4  Ho hum

   5    Expect a great tip

Price

1  change from $100 for two people

2 $100 - $200 for two people

3 $200 - $300 for two people

4 $300 - $400 for two people

5 $$$ dust off the visa you’re going to need it.