Oriental Terrace 19 November 2014

Oriental Terrace

Wine: Drift  Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough New Zealand 2013

Present: Ron, Jim, Karen, Andrew (?) John (?) Lara and Lisa

Campbells Limited Release Shiraz Durif 2002

Crispy skin whole duck - pancakes
Beggars chicken
Barbeque pork and vegetables
Dry chilli beef
Char kway teow
Sambal squid
Seafood combination with vegetables
Light fried bean curd Peking style

Andrew, Jim, John, Karen and Lara, Kim and Lisa and Ron.

The crispy duck was amazing. Beautiful flavour right through the duck.

Karen and Kim said the Char kway teow was fabulous - like home made.

The Beggars Chicken was spectacularly presented. Lisa and Lara had great fun with the hammer to open it. It was so worth it. The chicken was moist with lovely subtle flavours from the various mushrooms in the mix.

The chilli beef was a crowd favourite.

The bean curd had a beautiful sauce.

The other dishes were also very good.

Karen said nothing especially leapt out of the page on the menu when ordering, yet we still got a spectacular meal with great flavours! And there was barely a scrap left at the end.

No room left for dessert after an entire duck, an entire chicken and all the other dishes!

Corvina, Swinger Hill Shops, Thursday 6 November

Present: Jim, Karen, Megan, Ron, Andrew, Kim.  John was still in Sydney.

Wine: Stefano Lubiana Pinot Noir Tas 2011
Brown Bros Prosecco.

Corvina has opened in Swinger Hill shops in the same place that Santa Lucia used to be, and the theme and style of food has changed very little.

We decided to do the sharing thing, starting with deep fried olives, calamari salad, zucchini fritters and a mushroom dish.  The olives were okay, we thought we could do better, the calamari was the favourite, very tender with a fabulous salad, really nice dressing; the fritters looked a bit strange and turned out to be quite bland; the mushrooms okay, a bit messy.  It was in a balsamic vinegar and sugar reduction.

We had three pastas, a linguini which was great with garlic and chilli, a gnocchi which had a beautiful texture and risotto served with a touch of basil - fabulous.

Desserts were fabulous also, "what a conclusion" was Ron's comment, lemon tart, ricotta cheese cake, and cannoli.

Corvina is a very basic but very good Italian, on par with most of the Italian restaurants in Canberra.  It wasn't outstanding, but if you go without any over the top expectations, you wouldn't be disappointed.  The service was quick, the dishes came out quickly and the wait staff were friendly and informed. The main negative was the noise level, again a restaurant not for the baby boomers.  We thought we would venture into the realm of rating restaurants by their decibel reading...this one measured at 80.