This balloon is pointing us in the wrong direction. We're starting in Merimbula,
we're heading to Wollongong, we are eating our way all along the south coast, I'm Miffy Rigby
and here's What's Good in the Hood.
Merimbula, more traffic than expected.
I'm overstimulated. Look at this. Tell me all about Dulcie's. So Dulcie's was an idea that came about when a
friend and I came back for a high school reunion. We only had so much space to work with. The bar
was the focus and the food was kind of more of a side note but now it's also almost kind of taken
over a little bit. We thought that a burger would be easy, smashable, short menu, Dan Pepperell who
was a good friend of ours and they were doing Hubert at the time, we borrowed him and
tricked him into coming down for a week and he helped us design that burger menu.
So we've got some brisket, some chuck and some rump with a bit of fat to bind it,
fresh oak leaf lettuce, we've got our secret sauce, some tomato, super fresh, actually really light.
That is a hell of a juicy burger, I can understand why they're selling 600 of these a day.
I'll just have like one more bite.
Why valentina and why here? I suppose we wanted to bring
almost an escape or an experience to Merimbula. It's something that we've been lucky enough to
experience in venues and we really wanted to bring it here that dining, real buzzy atmosphere and like
a whole experience rather than just a restaurant or bar whatever it is. Tell us a little bit about
the flank steak that's on the menu. We could have quite easily gone down a style of meat say
a ribeye or something but the flank for us it's that lean, light cut of meat, presented beautifully
on the plate and with the anchovy butter it's that rich but light enough kind of dish. It's
a massive part of what we're doing here as well and it's probably one thing that we sell more of.
We're on our way to Burmagui now to eat some delicious baked goods.
It's just beautiful, I can hear the bell birds, the water's so calm, just loving it.
We had a restaurant on Lord Howe Island where I learned to bake bread.
I got sort of somehow into sourdough, I got consumed by it and then before I knew it we were
making sourdough and selling it and couldn't keep up,
turning the restaurant into a bakery during the day and the restaurant at night - and here we are.
Oh that is sultana rich. It's like the holy grail of snails. The Holy Snail. Perfect.
How did you get started? Well it started off just me and mum, family business and then it
slowly grew. Now it's me and my wife Caroline and there's like 35 people working with us now.
From 50 pies a day to up to over 3 000 pies a day. So now you've got lines around the block
for these pies. Well yeah, you know we change the menu around quite a bit so there's
always something different on. What are we trying today? Today we're going to try
one of my favorites which is a steak, lamb's fry and bacon. Should we hook in? Absolutely.
So tri tip's a really interesting cut, from Martin's Ridge Farm in Conjola. Really good farmers,
they farm, butcher, they do everything except for the abattoir side of it. It's not overly
tender, it's still really nice rare but you do have to chew a little bit. It's got good
intramuscular fat and it's got a really nice cap on top as well. Warrigal Greens.
Yeah, native spinach grows on the sand dunes, so being around the beach here
we've got heaps of that, just give them a little crisp up in the fryer. A little pepper berry sauce,
so native pepper berries, really hot real kind of fruity almost like blueberry notes.
Actually tri-tip is one of my favourite cuts, it's so flavorful
and juicy but it's got heaps of chew. It's got that extra
sort of fat content as well and I Iove the kind of the pepper steak treatment as well. You
kind of get those old-school vibes but it's quite refined and it's actually quite light.
So we've been here since October so I guess that's what five months now.
Really humble, simple food, nothing too fancy. My husband is Brazilian so his heritage does show
on the menu for today. A char grilled barbecue flamed lamb rump with some caponata and some
roasted vegetables and you're also going to be trying the steak for today which is
a rump cap steak that comes with some beautiful polenta chips and some chimichurri on the side.
Both cooked over a Brazilian barbecue flame so that will just show a bit of his heritage.
The meat is so beautiful and tender. Delicious. It's really really delicious.
Tell me a little bit about Blue Swimmer. Yeah little cafe down by the water. We like to try to showcase all the abundance of
what we have around us so we try to buy as local as possible. So you've got
harissa glazed lamb ribs. So we braised them off two and a half hours in our master stock,
fried till crispy and then doused in the harissa glaze. We just serve it with a
cumin yogurt just for that nice creamy effect and macadamia. Beautiful. I think
it's just not a cut you see very often, something different, it's got that really unctuous, nice
meaty flavour and it's something fun right, like you can eat it with your hands and get right in there.
This is Gerringong. One of the prettiest, tiniest little places but I also feel like I've said that
about everywhere on the south coast. I can just see the sea and the cliffs and the green grass
and a beautiful tiny church and we are outside The Hill.
We are going to go and eat some delicious meat and I am keen, keen, keen.
It's family owned. Son and I and my husband run it and we're fourth generation farmers from the area here
so we love local produce and we get a lot of that. Tell me a little bit about this dish.
So it's a dish that Krzysztof's come up with, it's a lamb backstrap and it's got some dumpling pumpkin
and a nice salsa over the top of it, it's lovely, goat's cheese and pepitas.
Tell us a little bit about Ain't Nonna's. Yeah so we both have background in fine dining, both worked
in Sydney and we just moved down to Wollongong, I was originally from here so it was coming home
for me. It's a little bit more relaxed. Yeah we just wanted to do traditional style Italian food with
our own spin on it. So we're just here for the next few months, who knows where we go from here.
Here for a good time not a long time. That's it. Ain't no nonnas. Yeah that's it.
So the meatballs. A little classic polpette, traditional beef and ricotta. The beef is actually red angus from Oberon in NSW.
Paul Kurtz, biodynamically farmed. We go to like a local butcher and he minces it through
twice for us like daily for us because we really like care about the texture of that meat.
Then we add the Vannella burrata to it. So we just want it to be really soft meatball like classic
sugo, like lots of red wine in that one and like a gremolata on top just to freshen it up a bit.
We couldn't have asked for better weather on the south coast over the last few days,
what a cracker. But I have to say it's so beautiful all up and down the coast, we travelled
as far as Merimbula which is now probably as far as you want to go for a day trip but absolutely worth it for
what I would say is arguably one of the best hamburgers in Australia, the amazing Valentina
with its excellent steak and seafood and brilliant oysters, we've stopped in for this incredible pasta
pop-up, it's been a hell of a day. I can't wait to come back and that's been What's Good in the Hood.