Little Hunter

Little Hunter is the new kid on the block in the Melbourne food scene. Located in a basement on Little Collins Street, and as the name suggest this is not a place for vegetarians to salivate to. This place does have some famous names behind it, collaborating with Pete Evens and ex-Fat Duck sous chef Gavin Baker.... So naturally my expectations were high. I recently went to Heston's Dinner so I was expecting goodness from this place.

To start off we got pork crackling where it was seasoned with paprika and served with an apple dipping sauce. A light fluffy snack to start off the meal, I found the apple sauce interesting. A surprising combination in my opinion. Personally I would not have paired it that way but I guess it would please some people.

Then we got the beef on toast which is finely sliced beef with liver parfait on a thin slice of toast (think 2mm). This was the hero dish for me. It kind of reminded me of the meat fruit (from Dinner) so that worked out very nicely for me. Only thing was this was very small, I could've done with another plate.

The final entree was the Cured Kingfish with seasoned roe. This was nice but nothing 'wow' to me. Again I found the portion a tad small.

A thing worth mentioning was the complementary bread served with chicken butter. The bread was freshly baked, soft and sweet. Worked a treat with the chicken butter, I would've happily had this as an actual entree.

For the mains, I had to try the Blackmore flank which was served with avocado. Served with a sector of avocado with onion garnish, this was a rather simple dish and the meat was cooked to perfection. Charred on the outside and still juicy on the inside. Again as per above comment, more on the small side as a main it would not feed a hungry man's appetite.

My partner had the NY strip, this one was adequate in size but sadly it was charred so much on the outside it was bitter when it entered the mouth. The bearnaise and tomato was interesting on menu but in reality it was just a little lacking. It just didn't do anything for me.

Roast Chicken was a pleasant surprise. Juicy succulent, cannot find anything to fault this dish.

Also had the Yam and Cabbage sides. I would like to argue that it's not really yam but more sweet potato... some may care to disagree. Cabbage was more wom bok but it was still a good pallet breaker all the same and I really like the creaminess of the blue cheese.

For dessert I got the Frangipane  meringue with passionfruit curd, peach sorbet. Nothing exceptional here, peach sorbet was nice though.

Overall I would rate it 15.5/20. Some dishes were nice but sadly they failed to maintain consistency throughout. It's not a bad place to visit but it just somehow did not live up to my expectation. I would go back for the Roast Chicken and Beef on Toast though. If all the dishes were like the Beef on Toast this place would've easily been a 19/20 for me.