Restaurant Reviews

Gin Long Canteen

- Alex Prichard 2 Comments

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amazing sambal noodles

date of visit: Wednesday 12 February 2014

Last week, Tara, of Sydney-based food blog VegeTARAian, was in Adelaide so a few blogging types headed out to Gin Long Canteen in North Adelaide for dinner and a catch up (and, in my case, to actually meet Tara for the first time).

Wednesday was a stupidly hot 40-something degree day and by the time I arrived at Gin Long all I was really interested in was a cold beer (or two). Hot weather tends of destroy my appetite, so food-wise I wasn’t feeling picky (not that I ever am). There were six of us at dinner (the minimum number Gin Long will allow you to book for) and our table was reserved for 6pm (again, Gin Long will only allow you to book for either 6 or 8pm). Even at that early time, Gin Long was busy although not at capacity – by the time we left at 8pm the restaurant was well and truly packed. And on a Wednesday night – not a bad effort at all. I would say – don’t go without booking, but …

Gin Long has been a hot venue since opening and, in recent weeks, with the arrival of Nu Suandokmai, straight from the CBD’s Golden Boy, it has become even hotter. The fact that Suandokmai isn’t planning on being in the kitchen long term (the media is suggesting he’ll be opening his own venue at some point) I think adds to the general excitement.

Seated at our table (having been informed we’d be leaving by 8!) and beers in hand, we turned our attention to the menu. With one vegetarian and one vegan at the table we ordered the banquet ($39 per head, minimum of four people) but also ensured that they would be well catered for.

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‘very exciting’: beautiful flavours

Food started arriving quickly. First up the “very exciting” beef salad. This was a light, Thai style beef salad laced with fresh mint. Flavour wise it was excellent but I managed to get a piece of beef that was laden with gristle (and which I had to extract from my mouth most inelegantly!) so that suggests that there’s some room for improvement in the attention to detail department. We also had sugar cane prawns, netted spring rolls (which I didn’t try) and the Malay curry puffs. These curry puffs easily, at this point, the best thing on the table. Crisp pastry, not greasy, a light filling which packed in plenty of curry leaf flavour – I would have been happy to sit down with a huge plate of just these.

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Malay curry puffs: amazing!

Entrées over, our main courses started coming out. I didn’t try some of the vegetarian dishes, such as the chargrilled tofu or the Vietnamese coleslaw, but I did put in a solid effort sampling the rest of the spread. The tamarind prawns didn’t really work for me (and be warned, as they are served with their shells on): there just wasn’t enough complexity of flavour. The braised pork belly was delicious but the star dish was the sambal thin egg noodle. This was a hearty dish with a good whack of chilli spice and topped with an egg. Noodles are one those dishes which can be so one dimensional and almost bland (yes, throwing chilli at something doesn’t necessarily give it flavour) but not these noodles. Plenty of flavour, plenty of heat and plenty of moreishness.

I suspect that some of the dishes may have been a little on the salty side – it wasn’t something I noticed at the time but later on I did have the tell tale slightly dry mouth, slightly thirsty sensation I always experience after eating salty food. But maybe I also just ate too many noodles …

By this time, it was almost 8pm and we were getting a bit nervous about what would happen with dessert. So we asked. “Oh”, said our waitress, “I always feel really bad about this, because people always ask and there is no dessert included”. You would imagine that at this point, we might have been offered the dessert menu … but no. Perhaps it was just too close to 8pm.

I enjoyed the food and thought that it was reasonable value for money. However, I really dislike restaurants with overly complicated booking policies. Part of me understands why restaurateurs make these decisions but, for the punter, they are really too often an inconvenience. The service at Gin Long was erratic: while our orders were taken quickly and food was served quickly, neglecting to tell us the banquet didn’t include dessert (especially when it seems to be a very common query) was an unfortunate oversight. After our food was all served, we were then forgotten about so getting the bill proved to be a lengthy exercise (one of our party has been a few times and says this has happened every single time).

Although Gin Long Canteen has a very funky interior, it suffers from an excess of hard surfaces and, at times during our meal, the music seemed particularly intrusive. And while I’m prepared to concede that I am particularly old-fogey-ish in this respect other people also felt the same way.

My final gripe? The staff need to be identifiable as staff. There was a real mish-mash of attire: Converse trainers mixed with VERY LOUD wedges, outfits dominated by fluorescent colours, and rather too many hot-pants edged with lace (I realise that for some people this may be a plus …).

If you can’t tell, I left Gin Long with very mixed feelings. I’m not sure I’ll be back in a hurry. The food makes it definitely worth a visit, but unless you’re a bona fide hipster you might leave feeling a little less than cool …

Gin Long Canteen
42 O’Connell Street
North Adelaide SA 5006
phone: 08 7120 2897

Victoria Hotel – now a Graziers Steakhouse

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squid

date of visit: Sunday 2 February 2014

Something like two and a half years since our last visit to the Vic. Or, at least, since my last review of it. I’ve actually had a couple of other meals there but nothing that’s made the Eating Adelaide cut!

With the awful hot weather and an Entertainment Book voucher burning a hole in our pockets it was by far the closest (and no doubt best airconditioned!) way of getting fed in relative comfort. The website says that dining opens at 6pm but some friends had given us a heads up that it was now 5:30pm – and, when I took the precaution of booking, it turned out that this is correct. The bistro has been rebranded as a ‘Graziers Steakhouse’ (I have no idea at what point that happened) and on entering there is a sizeable fridge with cuts of meat at the bar.

Aside from this novelty, the menu is really standard pub fare. There are, of course, schnitzels, salt and pepper squid, a pie, various pasta/risotto/pizza options. The children’s menu is very disappointing. If you are offering prime (or, indeed ‘primal’, as the table-talker says) cuts of meat, starting at 200g for the adults, would it kill you to offer smaller pieces of meat (say, rump) for smaller patrons? I know one three year old who would have loved to tuck into steak, chips and salad … Instead, the children’s menu features the ubiquitous chicken nuggets, followed by panko-crumbed fish (“oh, good!” I thought) … shaped as stars. I know some children are picky eaters and will only eat a limit range of foods, and I guess I have no problem with these things being on children’s menus … but I like my child to eat food that LOOKS like food and I would love venues (especially those billing themselves as family friendly) to offer child friendly portions of at least some of their ‘adult’ menu.

So spaghetti and meatballs it was for the toddler.

schnitzel

Of course, we needed to order with at least half an eye on what the toddler was going to eat from our plates. Salt and pepper squid for me and beef schnitzel with gravy for Andy. Both came with chips and salad. The schnitzel was ludicrously large and the gravy was served on the side. The salt and pepper squid was not quite so generously proportioned, although I found it quite enough (and I had half of my dinner eaten by the toddler). The squid was very finely scored and was very tender, although the batter wasn’t nearly as crispy as it should have been. The salad was, however, fresh and crunchy and not overly drowned in dressing (I say that as someone who prefers no dressing, so I’m overly harsh!). Andy demolished the enormous schnitzel and rated it quite highly.

Service-wise things were a little uneven. The bar staff were a bit unsure of their product (“which beers do you have on draught?” was met with “the board has the beers”) and I suspect that they were understaffed. Our drinks, ordered with our food, took an age to come out and my Riesling was way too warm. I’m just glad I wasn’t there an hour or so later. The flip side was that the kitchen obviously had things well under control. The food came out very sharply indeed – which is just what you need with a little person in tow (“where’s my dinner?” is a feature phrase of his at the moment!).

It’s also worth noting that the Vic now has an indoor children’s play area. However, the way the dining areas are configured, it’s possible to sit and eat your meal totally unaware of its existence. Remember this when you book!

Overall, I would have to say that the food was probably an improvement on the last time we dined in together and I imagine that come winter, we’ll be heading back to try out the pie. However, the Vic is our local. I don’t think I’d drive out of my way to have dinner here – I’m sure your local is pretty much the same thing!

Victoria Hotel
Main South Road
O’Halloran Hill SA 5158
phone: 08 8298 6633

Olive Green Kitchen

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date of visit: Sunday 5 January 2014

Let’s not beat about the bush – Olive Green Kitchen, a tiny Indian restaurant in Belair gets a bit of a caning on Urbanspoon. Something of a veteran user of crowd sourced reviews, I know to take them with a pinch of salt and to discard reviews at either end of the spectrum and to give less weight to those reviews which are the contributor’s only contribution to a site.

Even so, I ummed and aahed about Olive Green, particularly because so many of the dismissive reviews came from customers who had used a group buying voucher … which was exactly what I intended to buy. In the end, we decided that $39 for dinner was worth the gamble.

If you’re a long time reader, you’ll know that not only do I love a bit of a bargain but I also regard vouchers and deals as excellent ways of gaining the true measure of a venue. If a restaurant is any good, then the management will be taking the opportunity to convert people into return customers. A rubbish experience? Well, they’ve got your money once, but the damage is done – and the chances are you’ll tell your friends.

One of the Urbanspoon criticisms is that people have found it very hard to book tables with their vouchers. The voucher I purchased had both a very narrow booking window and a very narrow using window, which was complicated by bookings closing on 27 December. I did have to ring a couple of times (and, forewarned, I did actually make note of when I called!) and I did find that my call wasn’t returned but I did make a booking without quite the hassle I was expecting.

Now, as we were dining out with the toddler in tow, we made our booking for 5:30pm on a Sunday so when we arrived the restaurant was empty and we had no problem with slow service. We were seated, our orders were taken promptly and food arrived in a timely fashion. How things function at a busier time, I cannot say.

The voucher we had bought entitled us to a shared entrée, with main courses of our choice served with rice and naan, desserts and glasses of wine (you can see why we were prepared to risk $39 on the exercise!). The great thing about this kind of deal is that we can share the entrée with the toddler and not need to buy him his own main course.

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The platter consisted of onion bhajis, pakoras, chicken tikka, seekh kebab and fish amritsari. This was generally pretty good – it was let down by the fish amritsari which was really quite bland and also watery (I’d put money on it being frozen fish) and the chicken was a little dry, but the seekh kebab was a big hit with the toddler and we both enjoyed the bhajis and pakoras. The platter was served with a simple salad (that was a lot better than the sad lettuce leaf that often accompanies these things!) and some mint chutney and mango chutney.

For main course, I chose the beef masala. Well, I say ‘chose’ – in reality, the toddler announced he wanted beef and this looked like a reasonably mild choice (he’s not quite up to a vindaloo!). Andy picked the lamb roganjosh. OUr main courses came with rice, naan and, of course, we were munching our way through pappadums.

The main courses were really good. The meat was tender, the two sauces were not only different heats but also tasted different, and while the portion sizes weren’t massive, they were certainly ample. The naan wasn’t bad at all (perhaps not quite as puffy and crisp as it is in some places) but the pappadums were a little greasy. Overall, it was a more than fair spread of food.

Our deal also included dessert which is not normally something I’d for. In the past I’ve found Indian sweets far too sweet and, anyway, by the time I’ve scoffed a curry and a naan I’m always far too full to consider it.

But, this time, in the interests of ‘research’ I stretched myself. OUr waitress brought three mango kulfis to the table: umbrella shaped ice creams that sat atop little handles to stop the drips. The toddler thought it was Christmas (an ice cream shaped like an umbrella? whooooooah!) and even I really enjoyed it. Given this is my only experience of mango kulfi, I’m not sure I should pass judgement on how excellent or otherwise it was – but it was extremely tasty!

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For $39 we thought our dinner was excellent value for money. We’d be happy to go back, either on a deal like this, or just as ‘normal’ customers (admittedly, we’d probably just have mains in that case).

This restaurant illustrates perfectly why you need to exercise just a touch of critical thinking when using social review sites. After all, there’s nothing quite like finding out for yourself …

Olive Green Kitchen
Shop 1a 16 Main Rd
Belair SA 5052
phone: 08 8278 8366

Olive Green Kitchen on Urbanspoon