Lamb, lamb, lamb

Friday 25 January
New Zealand.
4.2 million people.
39.3 million sheep.
You do the math.
We arrived in Christchurch. Our bags did not. After a nice day wandering around, seeing pleasant river banks and buying underwear, we went to Hay's, a restaurant attached to a sheep farm (not physically). This is real locavore stuff, even if we came half-way round the world to be loca-. They serve lamb. Lotsa lamb. Canterbury lamb (DOC). Good lamb.
For openers (or what they call here "entrées") we had the NZ green-lipped mussels in a light tomato broth with chorizo. Good but sort of standard. Very good indeed were the little tortellini stuffed with goat curds (a goat's milk ricotta or the like) in a rich brown creamy sauce accented with toasted pine nuts. This went well with Te Awa (Hawkes Bay) Merlot 2004. We're not fans of merlot, generally speaking, but this had well-structured tannins and fruit, without that fructose bomb that many California merlots tend to detonate.
We had two specials: grilled lamb in a "Roman" sauce: dates (for sweet), anchovies (for salt), and mint (which we normally think fights with lamb, at least in the form of mint jelly [yuck]), all very subtle, then little bursts of olives, and fried mint along with fried sage. They served the slices of lamb with a butter knife (show-offs!).
The other was milk-fed lamb shoulder, braised till it fell apart, with a spice mixture called "ras al honout", a little pocket of roasted eggplant (aubergine to you; no, wait, other way round), on a bed of very creamy mashed garlic potatoes with a little basil and olives.
We had the last of the wine for dessert, though we did see pretty wine glasses of ice cream sailing by.