Te Mana lamb at The Pelican

We haven't been to The Pelican in a while. If anyone is interested in knowing, the restaurant no longer serve their complimentary delicious seaweed sourdough possibly because people were more interested in them than the other things on the menu.

#disappointedbecausewaslookingforwardtoit

They do have a sort of showcase thing going on for Te Mana lamb from New Zealand which is billed as the wagyu of lamb. A few items on the menu were based on those lamb.

Not their lobster bisque though. No lamb in there. It was still nice. It had a lot less cream going on than many and a nice crustacean sweetness in it. There were also tiny chunks of orange segments in the soup which were kinda nice in a warm orange-y manner.

So here's that Te Mana lamb rump sandwich in more colour saturation and less ideal light conditions for a photo shot. As a whole, I liked it. Nice cabbage and pear slaw in a buttery brioche. But the ratio of ingredients in the sandwich was a poor showcase for the flavour of the lamb. Too much texture and flavours going on. Could have been solved by more generosity of that thinly sliced lamb rump but clearly they failed the showcase here. Brioche was dry and crumbly. Needed moisture or should have picked a sturdy rye instead. But I still enjoyed it. Couldn't tell it apart from a regular lamb though.

There was a shank braised in red wine sauce and blue cheese polenta. Shank was competently cooked. Tender and had the lamb-y flavour from the bits of fat in them. No blue cheese flavour at all from the polenta which was slightly disappointing even though I kept my expectations low on that part. It was buttery and cheesy which made it pretty enjoyable. Tomatoes were juicy and bursting with sweetness. Calling this this the wagyu of lamb raises expectations. The differences between another good lamb shank and this was - well, almost impossible to tell.