Coast Restaurant and Bar (Hervey Bay Queensland) 05/2015

Told that Coast was a good restaurant I Googled it and rang for a reservation. No problem. Thinking about it an hour later I realized that it was an 08 phone number. That's not Queensland. I called back - it was the wrong coast, or Coast, only 5000 km. away in Western Australia! Must try it some time but not tonight.
The venue here is very plain with almost no decoration. Tables are plain, wooden topped and set with basic cutlery and crockery.

Chairs are also bare and hard.

not as comfortable as you might like for a long meal.
Their menu is set out as sharing dishes, entree size dishes and main courses and is designed to encourage sharing. I started with a 'special' Thai fish cakes.

They were served, with a dipping sauce, on a thick bed of Kewpie mayonnaise and covered with strips of pickled diacon.
They were excellent. Moist, with well balanced seasoning, the minced Barramundi was as good as I have ever had.
My next course was beef ribs.

Served on a wooden platter with a pickled tomato relish and Masterstock, they had been slow cooked and finished under a grill. Quite tender but stringy, as you would expect, there was plenty of meat and I enjoyed them although the stock was not to my taste and could have been thickened a bit.
I added a side dish of Cauliflower, scorched grapes, smoked almonds and harissa,

quite mild, this was another  very good dish.
To accompany this meal I chose a wine because of it's outlandish name and garish bottle label. Some Young Punks, The Squid's Fist 2015 Clare Valley Sangiovese Shiraz on the menu it was actually 2016. Of course I tasted it first. It's the sort of thing I would happily drink at a BBQ.

Comments: They seem to have a liking for off beat wine names. The reasonable size drinks list includes examples like Fat Bastard, Two Hands, Sexy Beast and Delinquente, Screaming Betty. Wines are marked up to about double retail prices.

The food overall is pretty good although their their web site has a rather pretentious spiel, referring to their cooking as Michelin star without the pretence. They have a long way to go before they get to that.

Prices for dishes are very reasonable.

 Score: 14.25/20