Restaurant Reviews

The Warradale

- Alex 1 Comment

Untitled

date of visit: Sunday 2 September 2012

You’d think it was something of a tradition round ours – going out for a meal on Fathers Day. Last year we ended up at Bareñdoe by accident rather than design. This year, we ended up going out because we were too lazy to do anything at home.

We’d been out and about during the afternoon so we were looking for somewhere to stop off on the way home. As I actually knew it was Fathers Day I rang ahead. The Warradale was happy, and able, to accommodate us at 5:30pm. The Warradale is also the pub I thought I was going to when I dragged some friends out for dinner at the Morphett Arms almost a year ago exactly …

The person I’d spoken to on the phone was very pleasant and it was lovely to turn up and have our table ready to go, complete with requested high chair. We ate in the Bistro, but the Warradale does have other dining options (the Tavern and Garden/Verandah Bars both have separate menus on the website). Décor wise, the Bistro is very Adelaide modern pub although it does have some distinctive black and white angular mural decoration with a kitchen theme.

As it was the very start of service, the staff were all fresh, efficient and friendly. The friendliness seemed genuine, too. Andy was even wished a happy fathers day!

The menu is reasonably stock standard pub stuff – all the pub standards are there as well as the dishes that are fast becoming the new standards (salt and pepper squid, pasta with a prawn or crab and chilli sauce). Daily specials are written up on butcher paper at either end of the large dining room, but if you haven’t spotted them the staff should bring them to your attention. At least, our waitress did.

The salad bar is included with the meals (and the waitress made sure to point out that we just needed to take our side plates up – I like that, too often you’re left wondering if the salad bar is included) and it’s a cut above.  Quinoa, cranberry and pistachio salad, anyone?  There’s good fat black olives, some really smooth feta, a range of salads and sauces and hot vegetables that don’t look like they’ve spent all day having all the goodness boiled out of them.

With an utter lack of imagination we ordered schnitzels. Chicken parmi for me, beef with gravy for Andy. Schnitzels are $19 each, and that includes the basic sauces, but you’ll add $2.50 for parmigiana. Main courses mostly sit in the $20-30 price bracket. The schnitzels were actually pretty good – they had a really crispy, coarse crumb which stayed quite crunchy even under the toppings or gravy.  Neither schnitzel was dry and the Parmigiana topping was tomato, ham and cheese with a very generous layer of ham.

The wine (and beer) list is actually reasonable – shock horror!  There’s a selection of craft beers, five ciders and the number and range of wines available by the glass is impressive.  There’s a good range of premium spirits too – if you want to wrap up with an Armagnac you can indeed do that.

The Warradale is offering standard pub grub in a standard renovated pub setting.  While the salad bar and beverages list get a tick, my usual complaint applies:  at just $21.50 the Parmigiana is just too pricy.

The Tavern Bar does offer $9 schnitzels on a Tuesday and $12 schnitzels on a Wednesday.  I think that would be the way to go – perhaps followed by a glass of something in the Garden Bar …

The Warradale on Urbanspoon

Fino, Willunga

- Alex 2 Comments

Untitled

date of visit:  Sunday 29 July 2012

I have no problem sharing my opinion on food or wine.  I write a blog, so that is perhaps evident.  However, one thing that fills me with terror is the not infrequent question that begins “Where should …”.  These questions can be simple (“where should I go for lunch?”), complex (“where should I take some colleagues from Hong Kong who want to eat seafood? The budget is no more than $50 a head …”) and the downright scary (“where should I go for my 40th birthday?”).

Faced with that last question, I actually put together a short list of venues, which I figured would mean I wasn’t ultimately responsible if the event turned out to be an utter failure.  Fino, out of Adelaide down at Willunga, was the final choice for lunch.  I guess 40th birthdays are a big deal because it was an impressive turn out of over 20 people. Which was great, because I hadn’t actually eaten at Fino – my suggestion was based on its reputation …

The Sunday of the lunch arrived and Willunga was heaving with its annual Almond Blossom Festival. We found Fino a little hard to spot (it’s next door to the Alma Hotel which you’ll see from the road with no problems). We also found parking a little tricky but a short walk, particularly after lunch, was all good.

Fino has an à la carte menu, but in a large group such as ours, we had the shared menu, which was $60 a head. I’m a big fan of this because it removes the bother of reading the menu and, ostensibly, quibbling over the bill. There was certainly no shortage of food: while the platters might have looked on the small side coming out of the kitchen, by the time we worked our way through the 5 or 6 courses we were all replete.

We started with fish (which I think was blue eye) served with celeriac remoulade, followed by brussels sprouts with lentils and Chèvre, house made chorizo, slow cooked pork, and dry aged scotch fillet served with goodies such as hasselback potatoes and gravy. For dessert, there was no apple pie in the house so we shared ice cream terrine and crema catalana.

Fino’s wine list is short but tidy. We started with a Deviation Road Loftia sparkling (were money no object I probably would have chosen the Larmandier Bernier …), followed by Alpha Box & Dice’s Rebel Rebel Montepulciano which hit the spot down my end of the room (and not just with me!). We wrapped up dessert with a selection of the PX sherries. I opted for the Bodegas Alvear (as recommended by our very affable and competent waitress*) which made me wonder why more restaurants don’t offer a range of decent sweet sherries rather than what is often a dull beyond all belief selection of dessert wines.

At the end of the day, the table I was on spent $105 a head. I thought that this represented excellent value, given not only the amount we had to eat, but also to drink. The service was great: the meal was well paced and the staff had an easy mix of professionalism and casualness that sat well with the feel of both the restaurant and the food.

The food is fiercely local and seasonal. One dish was garnished with a herb from the waiter’s garden, the chorizo was house made. The least local things were the free range pig and grass fed cow which were from Clare and the Barossa (respectively, I think). That’s a serious eye on food miles.

The food is also simple. If you are after a meal with bells and whistles then Fino isn’t the place to go. If, however, like a couple of people in our party, you haven’t eaten Brussels sprouts for over 20 years, the simple pairings of fresh ingredients will undoubtedly convert you.

The same weekend we visited, Fino was listed in The Australian’s Hot 50: Restaurants Lighting up the Country. It’s very easy to see why.

Get yourself a booking.

* On this note, I personally prefer the use of the word “waiter” for waiting staff of either gender. However, I realise that if I write many readers will think I am always served by blokes!

Fino on Urbanspoon

 

Assaggio

- Alex 2 Comments

 

 

date of visit: Thurs 5 July 2012

I have ummed and ahhed about writing this review. I visited Assaggio as part of a large group (there were 12 of us) which dines out fortnightly on a Thursday. This was my first time dining with most of the people and I always feel a bit self conscious reviewing someone else’s choice of venue. I also think that very often a large group is an unfair test of a restaurant.

However, last night Assaggio was awarded Restaurant of the Year in the Restaurant and Catering (SA) Awards for Excellence. This pushed me into putting down a few thoughts, because, frankly, my meal didn’t represent the best meal of the year (or, indeed, the best value meal of the year). And a bit of balanced consumer criticism never goes astray.

There are some things about Assaggio which I rate very highly. A dedicated vegetarian menu is available at all times – which is a definite plus because too many places offer just a token vegetarian offering*. The interior has plenty of soft surfaces so that, even though the tables are somewhat snug, there is none of the clatter that you endure at so many restaurants and cafés. Décor is smart and there is a wide window to peep into the kitchen.

Service was reasonably smooth but certainly not flawless: there was the occasional hiccup or delay with various requests (noted because one of those requests was my glass of wine!). A distinct incongruity was the fact that, when serving plates, the staff wore white gloves. The restaurant is simply not that smart. I’m actually struggling to recall going to any other restaurant where waiting staff served wearing gloves …

Food and wine wise, things certainly didn’t live up to their price tag. I ordered a glass of the Felton Road Chardonnay, which was around $15. Felton Road is a well known and tidy NZ producer and while I’m not overly familiar with the wine I have a sneaking suspicion that the bottle had been open a day or two too long. The punter ordering wine by the glass needs to be aware that this can be a problem, as does the restaurateur. If the wine is pricey enough that you’re going to keep on serving it when it’s a little past its prime you need to take it off your ‘by the glass’ list. Very often I’d query a glass in this kind of condition but, in a large group of people, most of whom I don’t know, I preferred to keep my mouth shut and let the evening keep on moving.

For entrée, I ordered the stuffed zucchini flowers. They were stuffed with a spinach, gorgonzola, ricotta and pine nut mousse. The gorgonzola wasn’t particularly strong so if you’re someone who’s not a big fan of blue cheese, don’t let that put you off. Unfortunately, while the filling was fine, the delicate flowers were swamped by a heavy breadcrumb crust, so that the dish became more about that crust than about the flowers or mousse. At $19 a serve this was a disappointing to say the least.

Main course wise I think I chose poorly. Or rather, I lacked imagination because I opted for the guitar string saffron pasta, served with blue swimmer crab and a tomato and shellfish sauce. There was nothing wrong with this dish and, price wise, it was on a par with the shellfish pasta I’d had at the Highway Hotel a week earlier. But at a restaurant that’s winning Best Restaurant gongs? I’d expect it to eclipse a pub pasta by a long way.

When we got to dessert I was, genuinely, quite full – so at least portion sizes aren’t a problem at Assaggio. I ordered the nougat. At $9 a serve I wasn’t sure what I was going to get. Oh – a piece of nougat, perhaps 3 cm long and 1 cm square (I’m being generous). I wasn’t the only person to order the nougat and I wasn’t the only person whose eyes popped out of their head at the combination of miserliness and cost!

After including my coffee, my share of the bill (and we did actually split the bill along individual lines because there’d been quite a disparity in ordering) came to $80. That’s the same as I paid at Press where I’d had more interesting food and considerably more to drink!

My impression was that Assaggio was nice but overpriced for what it was. And since that meal I’ve chatted to quite a few people, to see if my experience was a one off. Uniformly, opinion has been the same: “nice”, “good”, “too expensive”, “other places I’d go first”.

Is it enough for the “Best Restaurant” in South Australia to be “good” or “nice”? I don’t think so when there are so many restaurants where you can find “exciting” and “excellent”.

* Incidentally, Assaggio also offers a gluten free menu, although no one at our table made use of that.

Assaggio Ristorante on Urbanspoon