I Can’t Stop Thinking About: Magill Estate Kitchen’s Three-Bite Scallop Hot Dog

Let me tell you about my weekend.

I was in Adelaide for Tasting Australia, one of the best food festivals in the nation. I knew in advance my time in SA was shaping up to be pretty gout-y, and it was. I ate like a king. I had lamb made by Lennox Hastie. Justin James served me ice-cream out of a potato. I sat in the sun and ate a Gang Gang smash burger while drinking a Lobo Cider. I had a grand old time.

On Sunday, I had a few hours to kill before heading to the airport. It was Mother’s Day lunchtime, and everywhere was fully booked. I was resigned to just scrolling through my camera roll in lieu of lunch until Magill Estate Kitchen rang and said there was a spot available at the bar.

With a glass of Penfolds sparkling in one hand and my suitcase in the other, I settled in. The team brought me a suite of snacks from the venue’s new menu. That’s when I first saw it: the scallop sausage in Taiwanese bread.

A tiny palm-sized bun sat on a lacy paper doily, topped with a white sausage and a moreish sauce criss-crossed over the bun like shoelaces. It was so small and perfect-looking. It looked like a dish served in a kid’s play kitchen.

One bite and I was hooked – then devastated to learn I only had two bites left, maybe three if I nibbled.

According to executive chef Rodrigo Santos, the dish is an evolution of Magill Estate Restaurant ’s iconic lobster and scallop-stuffed chicken wing. Ahead of the recent menu redesign, Santos and Scott Huggins decided to create another highbrow-lowbrow dish with similar flavours for the more casual Magill Estate Kitchen.

The sausage is made from finely diced Japanese scallops and king prawns from supplier International Seafoods. The meat is seasoned identically to the chicken wing (but just like the colonel, Santos and Huggins are staying tight-lipped about that mix of herbs and spices).

The sausages are then steamed and finished on the barbeque. It’s topped with what Santos calls a “dumpling mayonnaise” made with vinegar, soy sauce, hot chilli sauce and a bit of sesame oil, all mixed into a mayonnaise base.

The backbone of the dish is the bread. “We call it a Taiwanese bread bun,” Santos tells Broadsheet, “but essentially it’s a bao bun, so yeast, flour, and milk are proofed. Then we steam it, and once it’s been steamed, we deep-fry it. That’s why it gets this colour but stays so soft.”

It’s simple but it’s lovely, and after four days spent eating some of the most memorable food of my life (seriously – ask me about the potato ice-cream!), this three-bite wonder is what I keep coming back to.

@magilestatekitchen