QCN organised a dinner at the William Angliss Institute last night. They do meals prepared by students, and I believe students also act as the waiters. This week, they happened to have a 50% off deal on their menu, which meant a 3-course meal for $17.50.
The menu did look amazing:
They allow you to specify dietary requirements ahead of time, but I think my eczema has been pretty good lately, so I thought I'd try it properly (though I did opt for the dairy-free entrée).
We started with bread, served with olive oil and some spice mix thing (not in the photo).
The bread was amazingly soft, and topped with rosemary and salt. We asked for extra bread, which they provided, and it tasted so deliciously warm, like it had just come out of the oven. Great start to the night.
I ordered the chicken broth with salmon and shiso dumplings with garlic oil.
The dumplings were great, and the broth had a soft garlic taste, almost pesto-like, but I thought it was delicious.
MrFodder ordered the beef short rib, with potato cream, shallot salad and port sauce.
I didn't get to try it all, but I tried a bit of the beef rib and it was amazing. Nice and soft, and the sauce was delicious. MrFodder and I agreed that this was the best dish we had.
For a main, I ordered the sirloin steak with caramelised onion puree, watercress, peppercorn butter and hand cut chips. Because I am a baddie like I am, I asked for it well-done.
The steak was actually really nice, and I liked the sauce and butter so much I ended up mopping it up with the chips.
MrFodder ordered the duck with chickpeas, soyabean, lap cheong ragout and hoisin sauce.
He said it wasn't so great, didn't have much flavour. Though I guess it's hard to follow from those ribs.
We finished with dessert.
I got coconut rice pudding with basil and mango (asked for no pineapple).
I was pretty iffy about basil in a dessert, but it was delicious. The ice-cream in that caramelised crêpe had a basil taste, and it worked really well, and the green sauce was basil. The coconut rice pudding didn't have a strong coconut flavour, but I still thought it was delicious. I think the thing on the right was some black sesame soaked in water, or something. All the flavours worked really well together. Definitely my favourite out of the three that I ordered.
MrFodder ordered the brownie with caramelised banana and macadamia ice cream.
He said he prefers my brownies (awwww), but the caramelised banana was really great, the nicest part of the brownie. Something I'll have to add to my to-do list!
The night was great. The staff were really nice, and our water glasses were always topped up. It was our friend's birthday tomorrow, and they overheard us talking about it and when they brought out his dessert, it had a crêpe with "Happy birthday!" written in chocolate sauce on it, which was really nice of them.
The food was really nice, and the atmosphere in the restaurant was also good. The theme seemed to be Van Gogh, and they had a little easel with one of his pictures resting on it in the middle of the table. There was a candle inside an apple. To be honest, the restaurant seemed a lot fancier than I expected it to be! We had cloth napkins, which is always my measure of how fancy a restaurant is.
I think the wait staff managed a good mix of being attentive without being overbearing. Sometimes it was easy to forget they were even there (am I a bad person for not noticing them?). There wasn't overly loud music, so we could talk to each other comfortably. Even with a table of 12 people, it was easy to have conversations across the table. Huuuuuuuuge plus for me. Food came out pretty quickly, and it didn't feel like a long wait between courses. We did have to order everything up front though, but I don't think that's a bad thing, as it means you can relax for the rest of the night.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time there, and I would definitely go again.
No comments:
Post a Comment