A few weeks ago, we took a little road trip to the Yarra Valley with my lovely cousin Catherine. We visited Healesville and a few wineries, and drove down the beautiful Black Spur, but the highlight of the day for me was lunch at the Giant Steps / Innocent Bystander Winery.
Giant Steps / Innocent Bystander Winery
336 Maroondah Hwy
Healesville VIC 3777
Ph: (03) 5962-6111
Prior to our visit, my awareness of Innocent Bystander largely centred around their ubiquitous (and delicious!) moscato, however, the winery has been blogged pretty heavily - it seems to be a very popular destination for daytrippers!
We secured ourselves a table outside on the deck, and then took it in turns to explore...
There's quite a bit going on in the large space, and I started with a tasting of the wines (luckily I wasn't driving that day!) We picked up a couple of bottles of the moscato to take home as well.
I had a sticky beak around the cheese counter... (there's a cheese room as well!)
I also found myself drawn to the variety of lovely-looking breads and pastries, baked in-house. In addition to the breads, there were Polish donuts, croissants, chocolate tarts, lemon tarts and much more. (You can't see the label in the below picture, but on the bottom right hand side, there's a cake simply labelled "Chef's Whim" - cute idea!)
Look at all those pastries! I really must come back for breakfast one day.
Innocent Bystander is famous for their pizzas and they're all made to order on organic sourdough bases.
The pizzas are priced between $19-$24, and have a range of simple, classico toppings. They have other meals as well - things like duck and mushroom pie, and red duck curry - but these were all rather expensive. There were many items close to the $40 mark: a bit more than what I'd want to spend on a casual lunch. We all ended up ordering pizza, and I'm glad we did, as they were generally very good!
I loved the burnished, bubbled-up dough (which I believe comes from the colomba method of folding and kneading the dough). Apart from the gorgeous crunchy/chewy texture, it means you get little craters and pockets of flavour and filling - yum yum. (Although sometimes this means you also get pockets of oil - not so pleasant).
 |
| Calabrese salami, san marzano tomato, oregano & buffalo mozzarella pizza - $24 |
 |
| Roast mushroom, asiago, black truffle oil, roasted garlic & parsley pizza - $23 |
I paired my spicy pork sausage pizza with a glass of the moscato - (treat yo'self 2011!) - and the light sweet bubbles matched well with the spicy pizza.
 |
| Spicy pork sausage, buffalo mozzarella, san marzano tomato & chilli pizza - $23 |
A few weeks ago, we took a little road trip to the Yarra Valley with my lovely cousin Catherine. We visited Healesville and a few wineries, and drove down the beautiful Black Spur, but the highlight of the day for me was lunch at the Giant Steps / Innocent Bystander Winery.
Giant Steps / Innocent Bystander Winery
336 Maroondah Hwy
Healesville VIC 3777
Ph: (03) 5962-6111
Prior to our visit, my awareness of Innocent Bystander largely centred around their ubiquitous (and delicious!) moscato, however, the winery has been blogged pretty heavily - it seems to be a very popular destination for daytrippers!
We secured ourselves a table outside on the deck, and then took it in turns to explore...
There's quite a bit going on in the large space, and I started with a tasting of the wines (luckily I wasn't driving that day!) We picked up a couple of bottles of the moscato to take home as well.
I had a sticky beak around the cheese counter... (there's a cheese room as well!)
I also found myself drawn to the variety of lovely-looking breads and pastries, baked in-house. In addition to the breads, there were Polish donuts, croissants, chocolate tarts, lemon tarts and much more. (You can't see the label in the below picture, but on the bottom right hand side, there's a cake simply labelled "Chef's Whim" - cute idea!)
Look at all those pastries! I really must come back for breakfast one day.
Innocent Bystander is famous for their pizzas and they're all made to order on organic sourdough bases.
The pizzas are priced between $19-$24, and have a range of simple, classico toppings. They have other meals as well - things like duck and mushroom pie, and red duck curry - but these were all rather expensive. There were many items close to the $40 mark: a bit more than what I'd want to spend on a casual lunch. We all ended up ordering pizza, and I'm glad we did, as they were generally very good!
I loved the burnished, bubbled-up dough (which I believe comes from the colomba method of folding and kneading the dough). Apart from the gorgeous crunchy/chewy texture, it means you get little craters and pockets of flavour and filling - yum yum. (Although sometimes this means you also get pockets of oil - not so pleasant).
|
| Calabrese salami, san marzano tomato, oregano & buffalo mozzarella pizza - $24 |
|
| Roast mushroom, asiago, black truffle oil, roasted garlic & parsley pizza - $23 |
I paired my spicy pork sausage pizza with a glass of the moscato - (treat yo'self 2011!) - and the light sweet bubbles matched well with the spicy pizza.
|
| Spicy pork sausage, buffalo mozzarella, san marzano tomato & chilli pizza - $23 |
No comments:
Post a Comment