Tuesday, May 19, 2009

En Izakaya (Balaclava) 09

Surrounded by an eclectic collection of ethnic cafe/restaurants and bars at the site of the now defunct Pipers (at no. 227 )this is a pleasing addition to the Carlisle St dining scene. Dishes are all entree size and ideal for sharing a feature that appeals to me. There are about 16 dishes on the menu in three groups - from the garden, from the sea and from the paddock and a few specials on a




blackboard. Prices max out at about $16 with a miso soup at $4



and others at $8+. They also offer takeaway at slightly lower prices. We enjoyed a miso soup, perfect for a winter night, followed by deep fried prawns with yuzu marinated eggplant and pickled ginger. ($16)
very good too. An good size serve of eggplant tofu was dominated by thick miso sauce. A special of silver whiting wrapped with shiso and salted plum in a tempura batter, only $10,





would have been excellent had the batter been lighter. It came with a small handful of Murray River salt flakes too! Similarly the two, very good size soft shell crabs in batter on a garden salad. ($14).



Rice is $3/serve. There is a small, reasonably priced, wine list. We drank prosecco by the glass $8, and a redbank pinot $7
Comments: A positive addition. We will be back again.

Score: 13.5/20

2 comments:

Rilsta said...

Hi there! I randomly stumbled across your blog and marvel at all the places you have eaten and the reviews you have written! Great work!

Just one thing though, I can't seem to find a way of going through your posts by date (like a dated blog archive) or any link at the bottom to "Older/Previous Posts". Is that intentional?

Elliot and Sandra said...

Hi
Sorry this may be a late reply.
The blog and index are continually evolving. Resulting from your query I am going to start adding the month and year of reviews to the index so you will be able to judge how fresh or stale they are.
There is an archive but it does.t help very much. If you do open a review, via the index, there is a date it was published.