After a series of residencies across town, Melbourne’s pop-up prince and Good Food’s Young Chef of the Year, Viveik Vinoharan, has found a kitchen to call home – in Mitcham’s newly renovated Dutch Rules distillery.
As you’d expect from the trailblazing chef, there’s a series of razor-sharp dishes coming off the pass: there’s a big and bold pork curry rigatoni, a trout crudo accompanied by the pristine produce of O.My’s farm, and a lamb biryani sausage that’s already the talk of the town. The Sri Lankan spin to much of what’s on the table is clear, but Vinoharan is taking plenty of liberties across Mitcham’s most exciting menu. And the results? Simply delicious.
Here’s Vinoharan now with what you might like to order when you’re next in Mitcham.
Which dish best captures the vibe at Dutch Rules Distilling Co.?
The lamb biryani sausage for sure. I’m using lamb shoulder, slow cooking it in a rich dark stock that’s made with leftover bones from other menu dishes, shredding it, emulsifying it with rice, soaked sultanas, lots of green herbs, garlic, ginger, tamarind, biryani spices (pretty much everything you can taste in lamb biryani), then stuffing it into a natural sausage casing, smoking it over cherrywood from Mark Foletta at Saffron Gramophone in Benalla, and then cooking it over coals.
At the moment we’re serving it with a cucumber and raw shallot salad, heavily seasoned with black pepper and a pandan dressing. There’s a little smear of Dreaming Goat yoghurt from Macedon Ranges on the side, which is some of the best yoghurt I’ve had in recent memory. It’s fun, smoky, deep, and smashable.
Your Sri Lankan heritage comes into play across the menu. What does that look like on the table?
I’d say it’s more about the layers in the food rather than the labels. There’s definitely the more obvious nod with sambols, spice blends and curries, but there’s a spice- and produce-driven ethos with the food. All the dishes are built with the Lankan concept in mind, with great respect to Aussie produce. The food feels familiar if you know the inspirations, and exciting at the same time.
Rigatoni with pork curry you say? Tell us more. It sounds like a real treat.
It’s probably one of the dishes that will end up staying a while. Definitely taking inspiration from your standard spag bol, but it’s instead rigatoni with pig skin and wallaby. I’m sourcing pig skin from Bundarra Farms in New South Wales, and wallaby mince from Flinders Island. Both products are ones that the farms would love to sell more of. It starts off with lemongrass, onion, chilli, garlic, ginger and cooks down for hours with tomato, minced pig skin and wallaby. The resulting “Bolognese” has a very unctuous, fatty texture from the pig skin, but thanks to the leanness of the wallaby it’s also not too rich. Perfect with a glass of wine, and perfect to share between a few people so you can try the rest of the menu.
I’m here for a good time, not a long time.
For a good time I’m definitely going for the gin tasting in the distillery, then a couple of oysters and a few skewers. Oysters from Gazander Farms in Coffin Bay are clean, buttery, and have a nice salinity to them – everything you want from an oyster. Plus the cupped shape holds our kombu and ginger mignonette in really well – should you choose to add some.
Currently, we have a lamb belly skewer. The lamb belly is marinated overnight in black spice – a spice mix with cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, fennel and cumin – and cooked overnight. Then pressed and cooked over charcoal, then finished with a fermented mango and curry leaf relish.
Got anything light and fresh?
It has to be our trout crudo. Not only light and fresh, but I’d say it’s up there with one of my favourite things on the current menu. We age Noojee trout for a week before breaking it down and slicing it just a touch on the thicker side – the quality of the fish lends well to a slight chew. The bones are turned into a pil-pil sauce seasoned with fermented green tomatoes that we pick at the O.My farm, and that goes underneath. There’s pomelo flesh (the skins are used in gin distilling), mint, shiso, trout, and it’s finished with a generous dose of a smoked ginger and lime dressing. On top we’re placing shards of vadai, a Sri Lankan snack made with red lentils, cumin, fennel and curry leaf. Kind of like a spicy lavosh.
And what if we like tasty food but don’t eat animals?
So we’ve got a hasselback eggplant skewer being served with an orange tofu sauce and topped off with a pol sambol made with coconut, tamarind and chilli. The eggplant is constantly dipped in a motodare (the savoury seasoning usually used in ramen) before being returned to coals to get a tacky, caramelised finish. For mains, I’d definitely go for our pumpkin dish. Our good friend Mark Foletta also grows these amazing Musquée de Provence pumpkins, which we smoke and char before serving it on a fermented bullhorn pepper sauce. That’s then topped off with a mole seco/furikake topping: cacao nib, nori, puffed rice, caraway, ancho chilli, curry leaf, cumin.
This dish simply respects and highlights the amazing Victorian produce available. For those wanting a vego pasta, we have a tortellini that’s filled with house-made curds, smoked onion and lemongrass, sitting in a pool of kasoori methi beurre blanc.
What if we really want to go big and go crazy. What have you got for us?
My people! I’d say for two, you could smash out some oysters, one of each skewer, trout crudo, charcuterie and sourdough focaccia. The charcuterie is made in collaboration with Kyle Nicol of Big Time Smallgoods, where he uses Dutch Rules liqueur in the production process. The current iteration is a coffee liqueur-spiced pastrami.
The second course has to be a pasta, the biryani sausage, and some leaves (eat your vegetables). I’d definitely recommend saving some of the focaccia to mop it all up at the end.
And to close?
I have a massive sweet tooth, so nine times out of ten I’m getting all desserts. For a fresh dessert we’re serving roasted peach and cardamom diplomat, with seasonal fruits (figs and pomegranate right now), honeycomb, and topped off with Dutch Rules Thai gin granita (think makrut lime, lemongrass, ginger). For some chocolatey goodness, we’ve got a Swiss roll filled with a fermented plum jam and vanilla crème fraîche, sitting in a pool of warm butterscotch, finished with fenugreek ice-cream. I love a play on temperatures and textures. If you’re on a liquid diet I’d definitely have the Dutch Rules coffee liqueur on the rocks.
Dutch Rules Distilling Co., 1/586 Whitehorse Rd, Mitcham, open for dinner Wed-Thu, and for lunch and dinner Fri-Sun, dutchrulesdistilling.com.au, @dutchrulesdistillingco