The September

Dinner Menu

From the brilliant mind of Head Chef and co-owner, Sam, we’ve got another menu ready to tell you all about. Fetching inspiration from all around, whether that be friend and fellow chef James Stapley (the great mind behind Kika and Paloma, and fellow owner of arc), the motley crew working hard at arc both front and back of house, or, most importantly, what’s fresh and in season that month.

Indulge us as we natter on about what goes into making this month’s menu…

Arc French Boule

with saffron and garlic butter, smoked paprika oil

We serve the bread course alongside our second course, bouillabaisse, for the September Menu. It’s perfect for soaking up every last drop of the bisque and the saffron and garlic butter is a nod to the flavours in a traditional bouillabaisse.

Bouillabaisse

with poached market fish, green lip mussel, fennel, scampi and crayfish bisque

A dish of humble origins and with a focus on ‘using what’s available’. Back in the day, fishermen in Marseille would take home any of their catch that wasn’t commercially viable & use it to feed their family. The fish, bones and shell fish would be poached in a broth along with saffron and potatoes.

The broth would typically be served up first as a soup with crusty bread and rouille (a mayonnaise made of olive oil, garlic, saffron and cayenne pepper). Once the soup and bread had been mopped up, a main course of the poached fish and potatoes would follow.

In our September menu, we tie all these key flavours and elements together across two courses, served together.

A true take on bouillabaisse requires fresh fish, so Sam and his team of talented chefs use whatever is freshly caught and available. But he’s really got his fingers crossed that at some point he’ll be able to serve this dish with New Zealand Sea Perch from the Scorpionfish family.

Beetroot Cheesecake

with whipped goats cheese, beetroot sorbet, poppy, confit beets, miso crumb

A savoury spin on a sweet cheesecake. We use poppyseeds to replicate the vanilla pods used in a classic vanilla cheesecake, the miso crumb acts as the base to provide a crunchy texture, and the sorbet using Frogsong’s beetroot provides the most epic vivid pinky-red colour. One of those dishes where it is essential to get a little bit of everything on your fork to enjoy it to its fullest potential.

Lamb Backstrap

or

Fried Halloumi

with parsley and shallot salad, chimichurri, burnt onion puree

also served with Frogsong Vichy carrots with coriander and carrot ginger butter

For those that opt for the meat dish in this month’s main course, we serve up Royalburn’s lamb backstrap - a cut taken from a very similar area to the rack, although the backstrap is not attached to the ribs. It has a good layer of fat to protect the meat as it’s cooked, resulting in a juicy tender finish. As Head Chef Sam concisely puts it, “it’s just a really fun piece of meat to cook”. We hope you think it’s a good one to eat too!

Vichy carrots is a classic French technique in which carrots are stewed down in their own juice with lots of sugar and butter, resulting in a buttery and sweet side for our main course.

The arc kitchen crew like using Frogsong’s carrots because they are super flavourful and they do an amazing job at producing really sweet carrots - perfect for a dish like this. In order to get the most flavour out of these veggies, baby carrots are left in the ground purposefully over winter. When the weather gets really cold, root veggies that have been left in the ground focus all their energy on the root, rather than the plant.The carrot then becomes very sweet because the energy that would normally be used for growing has been purely focused on the root and in turn, creating heaps of sweet flavour, making them perfect for Vichy carrots.

The Sorbet: Soleil fizz

with lemon sorbet, limoncello, bubbles

We’re teasing summer with this month’s sorbet course and making the most of a limoncello with a pretty cool origin story, sourced from the good people at Dunedin Craft Distillery. Co-founders Jenny and Sue are the first in Aotearoa to produce botanical spirits from surplus bakery products - they’re making booze from bread, our heroes! We highly recommend checking out the story and giving the distillery a visit next time you’re in Dunedin.

Hazelnut

Croquembouche

with choux bun, caramel crème, milk chocolate crèmeux, hazelnut

Another French inspired number in this month’s menu. For the September dessert, Sam was torn between two dishes; a Croquembouche and a Pari-Brest. To resolve the dilemma, he simply made a delightful combination of both. Lucky us.

Both desserts in their traditional forms are a feast for the eyes as much as the tastebuds. Croquembouche, a tower of Choux pastry puffs, piled into a cone shape and held together with threads of golden sugar. Paris-brest, a ring of choux pastry, sliced horizontally and filled with praline crème.

Our dish includes a choux bun (Croquembouche inspired), sliced horizontally (Paris-brest inspired) and filled with piped caramel crème (inspired by the flavours of both). To finish the dish in style, we balance a nest of spun caramel on top of the choux - affectionately referred to as our caramel hay …

And there you have it, the September Menu complete. If you haven’t already had the chance to try it for yourself, head to our booking page and let us know what you think.

Check back next month for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ of our October menu.

The arc team :)

Making September