This quite striking restaurant occupies a cavernous space
on the wharf beside the Leven river originally designed for a rowing club. Despite it’s emptiness It has a comfortable atmosphere. A front
and side wall
of windows with pleasant views, even on the greyest of days, helps.
Bare tables are well spaced, smallish but adequate size,
with padded straight backed chairs.
The girl who served me was excellent. She went through four or five specials in moderate detail and on questioning listed all the ingredients, usually seven or more.
The lunch menu is not large but does have several soups, half a dozen or more entrees plus oysters ($3.2 each). Mains include meat fish vegetarian and poultry.
Water was served promptly and i was not hassled as I looked through the extensive wine list. It’s quite reasonable with a good selection of Whiskeys. Three of my favourite drinks - Sake, Pedro Ximenes Valdespino sherry and Absinthe, did not appear.
Seafood chowder was packed with seafood, salmon and a white fish, prawns, scallops, pippis (perhaps they were chopped up mussels), a small amount of potato and carrot, all cut to a similar size in a good thick white soup.
A great dish for a cold day.
Crispy skin salmon with a rocket salad was cooked almost as ordered, a half minute less and I think it would have been perfect. The salad was excellent with a few thin slices of radish, a few roasted chips and some crunchy crushed nuts.
The salmon sat on a smear of sauce, mayonnaise i presume and was topped with some pickled vegetable cut into scares. I suspect they were crab apples. It came with a big slice of lemon but I would have liked more sauce.
There were half a dozen mundane desserts. I had the poached pear. It was not a go to dish although the presentation was excellent.
The pear sat in a thick strong biscuit base in a sea of bland custard. The whole dish lacked finesse and the taste was anaemic.
To accompany all this I had a glass of Tasmanian Storm Bay Sav. Blanc which was improved by being served in a very good Stozlol crystal wine glass.
As they say drinking wine from fine crystalware improves the experience by 20%!
This was a pretty good meal in nice surroundings. I could have done a lot worse.
14/20
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