Late Lunch at Tuck's Ridge

When we got to Tuck's Ridge, it was already 2.30pm & I felt like I could eat a horse plus the whole grape vinyard with the leaves, bark, roots & all. Roger was starting to get cranky. The 3rd vineyard and if there is still no food, we will eat grass.

This is the entrance to Tuck's Ridge, a fine example of a lousy signage design with wrong colour coordination. You can hardly read what's written there.

I didn't know who Tuck was & I didn't care cos at that point I only wanted to eat.

As usual, do not be misled by the emptiness & quietness of the place, cos it was packed inside with loud & drunken people who had too much high class fermented Ribena.

Since we had to wait like 10 minutes or so, & had time to kill, we decided to go for the wine tasting. Cellar doors were opened till 5 pm at this time of the year.

Nee tasted 5-6 samples, & when you do that on an empty tomach, it gets to you quicker. But anyway, we thought that the Vues Sparkling Chardonay was the best & we ordered a bottle for lunch.Oh, I'm not one who's big for wine. This cartoon strip says it all. It's pretty obvious which one would be me.
This is how the interior of the place looks like. All of these restaurants have glass doors/windows that overlook the vineyard down the hill.

And this is how Nee looks like when she's analysing & dissecting the menu.

For entree, we ordered the charcuterie plate with coppacolla, prosciutto, smoked salmon, char grilled chorizo, duck rillettes & caper berries (in simple English: Ham platters). And also Chicken and Taragon Terrine. Both were equaly good but then again, we were starving.

The heavy duty char grilled aged porterhouse, chunky chips, parsley salad, garlic & cape butter for the guys. Very nicely done. Thick and juicy!

Asparagus, as a side vegie dish. Sweeeeeet!

Nee's roasted ocean trout fillet on warm spring vegetable salad, smoked tomato dressing & olive tapenade.

For dessert: Excellent Coffee Creme Brulee with ice cream.

Parfait, which has quickly become my new favourite dessert.

Like the other restaurants, Tucker's Ridge sits on a hill overlooking the vineyard down below.

I can just imagine how it's like in summer or autumn, when it's warm enough to sit outside with a laptop under a tree somewhere.

But right now, it's just too cold to do anything outdoors.

If you dare to try, you'll just find yourself shrivelling up like a dried raisin.

Simply beautiful.

I would just love to sit there, but at this moment I wouldn't want to freeze my backside off.

I think I've never seen Nee look so satisfied before. Or maybe she's just a bit floaty with all the wine.
We capped the whole thing off with a warm glass of thick frothy latte and some peppermint tea (not the tea bag type by the way).

Even though this wasn't planned, we had a good lunch which lasted us till almost four thirty. Come visit us. We have the Tuck's Ridge Sparkling Vue going home with us. Generally food is of good standard and we have no complaints.

Ahhh, C'est la vie!