Wine:
Grant Burge: East Argyle Pino Gris, Adelaide Hills 2012
Gapstead 2006 BAllerina Canopy Durif 2006
Food:
- Fried soft chell crab
- fresh spring roll
- marinated chicken
- thrice cooked pork
- baby snapper
- beef sirloin
- pork belly grilled
Present: Megan, Ron, Kim, Andrew, John, Jim, Karen
Making a booking for this restaurant was a bit strange, they asked us to choose our dishes when we booked, which is most unusual. We couldn't quite work this out. Was it because they wanted to make sure they had all the ingredients for us? Maybe that was it, because, unlike last time we were there it was only half full.
Anyway, we didn't do that and waited until we got there to choose (these things are always done in collaboration aren't they? Imagine the email exchange that would ensue if we had to make a collective decision before we arrived!).
The crab cakes were beautiful, if a little salty. Crab cakes are one of Ron's (many favourites) so we try them whenever we can. These measured up pretty well on balance, not too fatty, a little bit of spice there.
The pancakes were, well, difficult to eat. They were great big fat ones, filled with the vegetable mixture, couldn't really be folded up, hard to cut up with fork and spoon, so some of us at least, made a bit of a mess of it. Filling but otherwise okay.
The grilled pork had a lovely fish sauce flavour, but was a bit tough. The fish was a nice mix of flavours, with the mango salsa on top, beautiful.The twice cooked pork was extra ordinary, great flavours of limes, chillis etc.Chicken was tender, flavour great. Beef was tough, sause okay.
Overall a good meal with some new tastes. The only drawback was that there were not many vegetables, either on the menu or with the dishes we chose, so the whole meal was a bit meat based. Oh well, you can't have everything.
