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Prior to his arrival in Tasmania in 1999, Frenchman Remi Bancal had been maitre d’ at some of Sydney’s leading restaurants and, further back, at a number of the very top hotels in Paris. He knows his wines and the entrance to his restaurant, Remi de Provence, boasts a fabulous selection of Australian, Tasmanian, French and other European regional wines and spirits and serves both as a retail bottle shop and the restaurant’s wine list. Inside, the restaurant is done out in muted earthy colours with simple, unclothed tables, mirrors written over with the day’s wines, grills and food specials and a whole wall featuring an intricate Tom Samek food and wine mural.
The menu is constructed in true French bistro fashion with the a la carte listing supplemented by fixed daily specials, a “menu express” and a five-course “table d’hotes” or tasting menu plus vegetable sides, desserts and some wonderful Australian and European cheeses maintained at perfect ripeness in a proper, temperature-controlled cheese cabinet. And the a la carte menu could happily grace any left-bank bistro in Paris – or Provence for that matter – featuring as it does rillettes, salmon brandade, a soupe de pistou pleasingly green-tinted and sweet with basil, bouillabaisse, moules and steak frites, a rich, slow-cooked beef daube, chicken fricassee with olives and, heading the desserts, a classic creme brulee to wash down with a sweet golden Jurancon wine from the Pyrenees, the French sensualist and author, Colette’s favourite drop.
Graeme Phillips