Maggie Beer is a food legend, and a personal icon of mine.  Unfortunately, Maggie was in Brisbane the weekend we were in Adelaide!  The next best thing was visiting Pheasant Farm and Maggie’s Farm Shop in the Barossa.

I couldn’t visit the farm without trying Maggie’s pheasant pie (or terrine as it was served).  This was as delicious as expected – and the sour cream pastry was beautiful!  I believe it was served with Maggie’s “Cabernet sauce” which is amazingly good – so good in fact we brought a bottle of it home with us!  We also enjoyed the “picnic basket” with vegetable pate.

We stuck around for a cooking demonstration – featuring Maggie’s favourite ingredient – Verjuice (the juice of unripened wine grapes).  I was quite excited because the demonstration was held in the kitchen featured on Maggie’s tv show “The Cook and the Chef”. I even had a nerdy photo taken of me in the kitchen!

Maggie Beer’s Farm Shop
Pheasant Farm Rd
Seppeltsfield   SA

Ph: 08 8562 4477
Web:  http://www.maggiebeer.com.au/home/

I’ll just do a quick review for 1918, since they certainly had no shortage of customers when we visited.

It was a freezing cold night in the Barossa Valley and, even though we felt like we’d done nothing but eat all day, we needed something hearty to take away the chill.

For some reason we thought it was necessary to have bread to start (in fairness, it is baked fresh each day and served with parmesan olive oil), and then french fries as a side (the aioli was delicious).  We ordered before we saw how big the mains were!

My main was the Fish of the Day.  On the day in question, it was seared salmon served with zucchini fritters and a mandarin sauce.  My salmon was cooked just how I like it (medium rare) and the zucchini fritters had a hint of Indian spice – I think perhaps coriander seeds.  The mandarin sauce was a perfect foil to the salmon.

Unfortunately, J’s dish wasn’t quite as successful.  He had the grilled lamb loin with merguez sausage, slow roasted onions, cavalo nero and cherry tomatoes.  Although the portion was generous, he felt the lamb was a bit tough and the dish as a whole needed something to bring the different elements together.  His words “it’s a bit boring”.

After all this food, we couldn’t bring ourselves to order dessert just yet…so we ran across to Foodland and bought some Maggie Beer icecream to enjoy later in the evening (what, I can’t go without dessert – I’m on holidays!).

1918 Bistro and Grill
94 Murray St
Tanunda  SA

Ph: 08 8563 0405
Web:  http://www.1918.com.au/