Review by Bob Hart

Herald Sun Melbourne 12th August 2006

When a couple of Melbourne restaurateurs snapped up this place in a divorce- powered fire sale about three years ago, we all became instant beneficiaries.

Because Mt Rael - initially called 3777 after the local postcode, a fact most patrons ignore - is a superstar of this polished food & wine region. Swing up the steep driveway and, if the day is like the one on which three of us lunched there last week, prepare to be dazzled by the spectacular view.Mt Rael sits high on a hill named, quaintly after the original owners Ray and ELaine. And not, mercifully, Shirley and Tom.

From across the stylish dining-room, you gaze out across the best bits of the Yarra Valley and, inevitably, are reminded of its incomparable splendour. The food reinforces that impression: it is smart, real and constructed skillfully around the finest local ingredients. My meal for example began with a superb risotto laced with smoked rainbow trout from nearby Buxton and finished with crisp pancetta and a drizzle of parsley oil. My wife chose a Yarra Valley goats cheese salad with curls of smoked bacon, olive, rosemary - a light and enchanting entree. My mate meanwhile made embarrassingly short work of a golden pithier (pie) of oxtail which came with a simple green salad and a dollop of house made green-grape chutney.

Main courses were all they should be in a wine region, and rather better than you will find in most, here and abroad.

First my steak - a mighty slab of rib still attached to the bone, cooked to just the right shade of green pink and served with a herbed Yorkshire pud, onion jam and jus. It made me very, very happy. My wife insisted her braised nuggets of lamb neck were even better. They spilled seductively from a basket of what I like to think of as Melba toast, given the great lady once lived, and possibly warbled down the road. They came with a mound of golden parsnips which, after having snaffled a sample of the meat for research purposes, I generously shared with her.

No less stunning was my mate's slow cooked disc of rolled pork belly with Borlotti beans, fennel and shallots. Side dishes - one of buttery, silken mash, a second of broccoli with garlic and a lemon-and-rocket salad - were exactly as they should have been. All three courses, also, were ideally suited to the local pinot noir we drank with them - a fine, 2002 Wedgetail Estate, easily worth the $60 price tag.

A trio of fine puds wrapped things up: mine, a baked apple on a puff-pastry base resting on a mound of house made ricotta layered with prunes and clover honey, hers a warm rhubarb and spice cake with vanilla scented yoghurt, and his a seriously decadent soft-centred choccy beast with rum-soaked raisins made with super-premium Kennedy & WIlson chocolate from down the road.

"To live here is quite extraordinary", says maitre d' Sean Lee, who is one of Mt Rael's co-owners. His co-owner and Mt Rael's executive chef, John Knoll agrees.

"Imagine sitting up here, watching eagles and hot-air balloons compete for air space," John says.

Oh, all right. We shall try.