Salt on the Lips. Stories on the Table.
A slow, sumptuous evening at Bangalay Dining
Bloss McClelland
There’s something sacred about a girls’ weekend. As always, the bags are overpacked, the playlists are finely curated, and the group chat finally finds its real-life form, alive and noisy over Negronis. This weekend, we found ourselves chasing connection and indulgence in equal parts, and lucky for us, we landed at a table that offered both in spades.
Salty Founder Charms Baltis and wellness writer Lillie Brown
First up, focaccia with whipped black garlic butter.
Oily, salty, finger-licking good, the only fault? We all just wanted more. Even the hefty slabs of thick-cut, house-baked focaccia only teased us. The black garlic butter was the perfect quenelle and just the right amount; you can always want more butter, but it was just that, perfect.
Next on the menu: Prawns on toast, brioche, crème fraîche, bottarga & chive.
For those without shellfish immunity, there's the venison buckwheat cracker: crunchy, a little wild, and just cheesy enough to charm you into thinking it's a great idea to order your third dirty martini. Despite missing out on the delicious little morsels of another trendy prawn toast variation, the venison was notable, and the reportedly delightful prawn toast was enough to live vicariously.
As fresh as it gets, the Ulladulla yellowfin tuna crudo with pickled daikon, mandarin and oyster emulsion was the closest you get to eating precise little cubes of ocean. The umami punch of pickled daikon and mouth-watering mandarin, this dish was the perfect palate cleanser.
Well, well, well, what a shining star: 30+ day dry-aged Milton sirloin, parsnip, caramelised sprouts and kale. With parsnips roasted so perfectly, it was reminiscent of my nanna’s culinarily imperfect, but very delicious, slightly over-baked, caramelised root vegetables.
The perfect amount of jus, so well cared for, it left a delightful fatty shine to all our lips that no L’Oréal lip gloss could compare with.
““The perfect amount of jus... left a delightful fatty shine to all our lips” ”
Finally, while it's a cliché, it wouldn’t be a girls’ weekend away without a little bit of dessert; this white chocolate mousse, Davidson plum, and ruby chocolate crumb was quite the finishing touch.
Now, I’m a little bit more of a dark chocolate lover, and I read white chocolate and tend to get a little uncomfortable with the amount of sweetness I’m about to experience. And with a table of women full of sweetness already, if not in temperament, then in cocktails, did we need more?
Turns out, we did. But not in the way we expected — the Davidson plum was the ideal offset to a not-too-rich or overly sweet dessert, but an impeccably balanced one that even this bittersweet lover didn’t shy away from.
Bangalay Dining, Shoalhaven Heads is well worth the visit, regardless of the occasion.
