Restaurant Reviews

MP3 Cafe, Brighton

- Alex 2 Comments

brighton_jetty_20100606_01photo by eosdude

date of visit: December 2011

Something I really, really hate to come across in anything pretending to be a restaurant is a laminated menu. Sure – it might be durable and easy to clean but for a start they get tatty really easily and secondly they show up just how unseasonal your menu actually is.

MP3 is a case in point. It was a warm summer evening and the menu had lamb shanks on it. Seriously, lamb shanks in the middle of summer.

To compensate for the limitations of such a menu MP3 has masses of specials – and not only does this (I suspect) confuse customers, I know from experience that it confuses the staff. At some point a restaurant has to realise that it’s impossible to please every single diner and to flood your menu with dishes in an attempt to make every customer’s mouth salivate is just not going to work.

I wish I could say that my little rant was over. But no, it’s not. We managed to score a waiter who was working her first shift. I’m firmly of the opinion that managers of any customer facing team need to make sure that staff are prepared for the moment they do face the customer. In our case, our waiter was not. On the night we were there, the menu offered two variations on salt and pepper squid – one was on the laminated menu and one was on the specials board. I didn’t know which one I wanted, our waiter didn’t seem to know the difference and once she had taken our order the manager had to come out and verify the whole thing. And he was pretty woolly on the squid dishes too.

It transpires I’d ordered an entrée sized squid dish. The squid itself was OK and it was served with a non descript salad. What totally ruined the whole dish was the fact that it was all drowning in sweet chilli sauce. That was not good.

We only had the one course and, using our Entertainment Card meant that it was a very cheap meal for four (after discount aobut $85). Cheap, but not good value.

Not one I’ll go to again.

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Victory Hotel, Sellicks Hill

- Alex 1 Comment

 

 

date of visit: Monday 2 January 2012

Here in South Australia the New Year started with something of a bang. A very hot bang with the temperature hovering around 40°C. There’s not a lot to do in that type of weather other than go out for lunch …

My last visit to the Victory Hotel was well over a year ago and with the lovely views over the sea it’s the ideal place to take overseas visitors. On this occasion, I think we must have scored the last table in the house – and I was pretty surprised about that, ringing up just the day before.

When we arrived for our 12:30 booking the pub was already busy. We’d booked an inside table (seriously – it was 40°C – we were NOT going to be sitting outside, nice views or no) and they’ve done a good job of both packing tables in but making sure customers don’t feel cramped. As usual, our table was complete with high chair and we’d been given a spot that ensured the high chair could be out of the way of both staff and customer traffic.

The way the Victor works is that food orders are taken at the table but you order your drinks at the bar. This place is renowned for its wine list and I was happy (as in, super happy) to be able to order a Leo Buring Leonay 2004 Riesling for a very sensible $55. Yes, on this occasion I had made sure I was not the designated driver.

In addition to the menu, which you can check out on the website, there are daily specials. I opted to start with one of these – the vodka cured salmon with deep fried capers, white anchovies and the ubiquitous microgreens. I was a little disappointed to find only a couple of tiny anchovies on my plate (I was busy dreaming of the big fat boquerones you get in Spain … because I’m a bit of a greedy when it comes to those!) but there was plenty of salmon and the dish not only looked good, it tasted good too. Andy started off with another special – a crunchy prawn and pork Thai style salad with nam jim which he said was good and pleasantly spicy.

For main course I couldn’t go past the crispy skinned pork belly with a slipper lobster (I had to look this up – they are one of the marine bugs like Moreton Bay and Balmain), a granny smith remoulade and kipfler potatoes. In fact, 75% of our table had this dish and one person didn’t eat all their crispy skin so I got to finish it off!

This dish was really something – a generous piece of pork belly, perfectly moist and tender with great crackling. The granny smith remoulade was excellent – it really cut through the richness and smoothness of both the pork and the slipper lobster. This is definitely something I’ll think about pairing with pork in future. On a hot day, this is perhaps not the most obvious thing to order (and certainly something I wouldn’t be cooking at home!) but it absolutely did the job. I would go back for this dish.

We couldn’t fit in desserts so we just wrapped up with coffees. Main courses are mostly around the $25-$30 mark so expect to spend around $50+ per person (this depends a bit on how excited you get by wine lists …). This makes the Victory Hotel expensive for a pub – and in many respects you won’t forget you’re in a pub while you’re there. Everything is very casual, the chances are you’ll wander through the front bar, and you most certainly don’t have to dress up.

But then again, every now and then it’s wonderful to go out for really good food and have it be a casual affair. The Victory doesn’t sell itself as a fine dining venue – but it absolutely delivers with respect to both the food and wine.

Victory Hotel on Urbanspoon

Windy Point Restaurant

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"windy point" - view over Adelaidephoto by Sonti Malonti

date of visit: Friday 30 December 2011

Windy Point (the restaurant) is somewhere we always take overseas guests. We go there for the view – it’s a great place to see the fairy lights of Adelaide and, of course, you can usually spot some local youths with their Commodores in the car park!

If you know me, it’s also no secret that the last few times I’ve eaten there I’ve been incredibly disappointed with the service. We’ve had all manner of hilarity – Andy ordering a glass of Beaujolais and being brought a glass of white wine, cutlery going flying (thankfully only to the floor), really intrusive and insistent pouring of water and so on. This hasn’t only been my experience – when I’ve discussed the venue with others they’ve felt the same. And it’s always been a shame because the food is actually pretty good. So when we took our latest overseas visitors there I wasn’t really too sure what to expect.

HOORAY! Things were great – and by things, I mean pretty much everything. After my last meal at Windy Point, I’d go back even if it didn’t have a view. And that’s how it should be.

We arrived early for our (super early 6pm!) reservation so we sat in the bar and had a drink or two. The barman was affable and chatty, while getting on with his general setting up for the evening jobs. We weren’t rushed to our table, so we actually ended up sitting down closer to half past 6.

Then the serious business of food and wine got underway. We started with bread (the organic sour dough with olive oil), which I followed with the warm green and white asparagus with 62°C egg. This was a very pretty dish – the asparagus all neatly arranged in a criss-cross pattern and it tasted great too (er, well, I do like asparagus). The asparagus, egg and hollandaise is all a really classic combination of flavours so there was nothing that could go wrong. The addition of pangrattato (that’s Italian for ‘breadcrumbs’) added some texture and I was happy.

For main course I ordered the sous-vide Wagyu rump. I almost didn’t, because the menu said it was served medium, but I needn’t have worried as it was perfectly juicy and tender. However, I do think that if I were someone who liked (or needed to have) my steak medium I would have been disappointed and probably slightly freaked out.

I managed to squeeze in dessert: passionfruit butter and lime crêpes. I think this is always on the menu and some people criticise it as being too sweet – but really, it’s a dessert! I enjoy it – I find it a perfectly acceptable way to finish a meal as it’s not too heavy and I don’t find it cloying.

The wine list at Windy Point is extensive and interesting. They don’t seem to have a dedicated sommelier (or at least, not one who comes to your table and answers your questions) but there must be at least one staff member who knows the list because the lady who was waiting our table was happy to go off and find out the answers to our queries. We drank the Stefano Lubiana Primavera Chardonnay and the Leabrook Estate Pinot Noir. They’re both at the moderate end of the price range – if you want to push the boat out then the wine list at Windy Point will let you do that!

The real joy on this visit to Windy Point was that the service was vastly improved on previous visits. It was unobtrusive – which I think is just about the best thing you can say about service in a restaurant. Our waiter was pleasant, helpful and did her job without trying to be friends with us.

Top dinners like this don’t come cheaply and, while on this occasion I didn’t see the bill, I doubt we left for under $100 a head. Of course, a large part of that was the alcohol … but if you’re spending money on food and environment, why wouldn’t you have something lovely to drink too?

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