Takeaway takeover – steering a course through an unfolding pandemic

Local fine dining restaurant, Pilot, is tucked away in the back corner of the Ainslie shops in a quiet suburb of North Canberra. Over the last five months, Pilot has steered a course through the unfolding pandemic, as the changing relationship between diners and the restaurant has mapped the meandering trail of the COVID-19 pandemic through lockdown and easing. We’d been to Pilot to sample their long Sunday lunch in late February before the world fell apart. Then the pandemic struck and the lockdown began. Stuck at home our minds turned to the fine dining of the new era – takeaway. Then in July, as the lockdown finally eased – at least for a while – we found our way back to Pilot.

Looking back after many months our earlier long Sunday lunch at Pilot restaurant in late February now seems to be part of another world. I suppose it’s much like many other local places across Australia – once regular haunts of diners seeking a good night, or day, out, suddenly stranded by circumstance. It was a time when a relatively obscure regional city in China – Wuhan – was bettter known as a UNESCO Creative City of Design, than the source of a global pandemic.

‘Looking back after many months our earlier long Sunday lunch at Pilot restaurant in late February now seems to be part of another world. I suppose it’s much like many other local places across Australia – once regular haunts of diners seeking a good night, or day, out, suddenly stranded by circumstance.’

Fish curry in aromatic broth.

How quickly this all happened was brought home when I realised that I had two unfinished articles for this blog – one about the long Sunday lunch just before we went away on a two and a half week regional road tour to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island in March and one about the takeover of the dining world by takeaways, as restaurants scrambled to convert their operations in order to survive.

Dispatches from the Royal Mail – Wickens restaurant delivers the goods

I’ve always been interested in the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld, at the southern tip of the Grampians, and its varied offerings. It’s been one of Australia’s best regional restaurants for many years and I am particularly attracted by regional restaurants. I took advantage of a regional road tour through Victoria to Adelaide to update my first visit from several years before. In every respect the experience was worthwhile. The attention to detail and focused application was apparent, from the signature restaurant to the wider range of services it provides.

On a recent regional road tour through Victoria to Adelaide and back, I had a number of dining experiences which were memorable – each in their own way. These ranged from a breakfast of sourdough toast with poached quince, pistachios and honey at Big Table at the renowned Adelaide Central Market – surely one of Australia’s great wonders – to a counter meal by a roaring fire at the Gilbert Hotel in Adelaide city and finished up with an excellent Wagyu corned beef with onion sauce, capers, peas and mash and fusilli with bolognese ragu at the Mountain View Hotel owned by the Pizzini family in Whitfield in the King Valley.

‘Fit for purpose’
The high point of the whole trip were two meals other than these, one during the trip and one soon after arriving back in Canberra. The first was at Wickens at the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld, at the Southern tip of the ancient Grampians Mountains that rear up out of the flat plains around.

Stairway to heaven - the walkway to Wickens restaurant

The second – which I will write about in my next article – was at the local Pulp Kitchen restaurant in the heart of Ainslie, one of Canberra’s inner north suburbs. Each of these two meals were very different, in very different restaurants. Yet they were both excellent in their own way, ­‘fit for purpose’ as they say.

The Royal Mail kitchen vegetable garden - the largest of its kind in Australia

The signature of food – a garden, wine cellar and restaurant at the foot of the Grampians
The first experience was an encounter with the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld and its signature restaurant, Wickens. This is one of the hottest restaurants in regional Victoria – even making it into the popular media by being featured on Master Chef a couple of weeks after the trip.