This experience needed its own post.

When I was planning our trip to Novello I had read about a very interesting restaurant called ANT in the village. For such a small place, it has three different restaurants plus two cafes. Meanwhile in Dubbo, Michael was also reading about ANT and he messaged me to ask if I thought we might have dinner there during our stay.

I was able to book online months ago and have corresponded with the owners a few times since.

We knew that this restaurant only has one sitting – all customers each night must be seated at the same time, usually 8.30pm, but because last night it was only the four of us and a young Italian local couple, we were seated a little earlier at 8.00pm.

We had walked past the doors on the day we arrived and it looked impossible for there to be a restaurant behind them – but tonight we were met at the gate by one of our hosts, who I thought was called Tetsiana – but I can’t find that name anywhere, however that is what he will be called for the time being.

The restaurant was only small, could possibly accommodate 20 guests at one time, but as I said, tonight there was 6 of us.

We were each given a small aperitif of ginger beer and a squeeze of lime which we all enjoyed. Then Tetsiana invited us to follow him down to the cellar to select the wines. There is no wine list for this restaurant, therefore no price list either.

The cellar had been beautifully restored by the current owners, not the men who operate ANT, so we followed along into what was like an Aladdin’s Cave.

With Tetsiana’s help, based on what we told him of our preferences for wines, we selected a local Nas-Cëtta (one we had tried at the cantina the previous evening), and a bottle of 2020 local Barbaresco made by an Australian, called Fletcher. We had to! And it was wonderful.

Michael and Jeanie met the other two people looking after us last night – the Italian-looking man in the beret was called Alex, he was from Denver (Colorado), and he was the quirky co-owner of ANT, and the man next to Jeanie was Louis, he was our chef.

We knew that there was no menu for ANT, that the owners and the chef selected lcoal produce, what they had in their fridge, and designed each evening’s courses around that. Jeanie asked how many courses we would be having, and we were all a little surprised when we were told nine.

Even though we took photos of each of the courses, you will be pleased that I am not including any of them. As I said, my phone was playing up and there were way too many. But the photos helped to remind me this morning what we had enjoyed last night.

When I booked I had advised that Michael has an allergy to sesame, thinking there was no way that an Italian restaurant would use much sesame, if at all. But luckily I did, there were two courses that had an Asian flavour, therefore sesame, but Michael was well catered for with alternatives of a fresh sardine in one course and octopus in another.

Courses as I remember:

Crunchy veal sinew, which looked and tasted like pork crackling which we ate as a pre-dinner snack. This was followed by an endive leaf filled with sardine flavoured mayonnaise; then a poached porcini mushroom wrapped in rice paper and sitting in a broth. And so on and so on. The final two courses were desserts, a violet-flavoured gelato served on a frozen slab of limestone, and then what we thought was a very saucy creme brûlée turned out to be a Japanese dessert called chawanmushi – delicious.

Mind you – we were only told what we had eaten as we finished each of the courses.

My favourite course was a half an onion that had been cooked in one piece after a layer of miso had been squeezed between each layer of the onion. My least favourite was a risotto flavoured with bone broth and topped with burnt onion powder.

I am sure you are getting the idea.

Our whole experience took almost three hours – a late night for us.

Luckily we did not have too far to walk home.