Camden Hotel (Caulfield) 11/2018

All this signage might give one the idea that this is a drinking place, which, of course, it is but it's also a place that serves fairly decent food at quite modest prices.

 It's unpretentious with basic table settings

 in a large open room with a central bar.
We'd heard that their large flounder was particularly good so that had to be top of our choices. 
What sort of soup do you have we asked. Surprisingly soup is not available, it's not on the menu but there's enough to chose from.
So, first the flounder. It comes with chips 

or mash and a small salad on top of it.

It was not very big but it was plump moist and very tasty.  

I decided on a porterhouse steak. As usual I requested it be served 'blue' that is seared on the outside and just warm in the centre. 

Not as usual that was exactly how I did get it!! Served with mash and a mushroom sauce it was as good as it gets. 

 We were not sure they could do this well again but we thought it well worth a try. Sandra had the flounder again which was pretty well identical to the first one and I chose a veal cutlet with potato Gratin.

I have a particular aversion to eating charcoal and sent the gratin back to be replaced by chips.The veal was excellent. This time we tried the desserts.

The lava cake 

was overcooked, slightly burned and dry. Very disappointing. 

The apple and rhubarb crumble was a bit sour 

but quite acceptable. 

As the famous Greek philosopher rightly said 'You can't step into the same river twice" and that proved right here.

Will we go there again? Sure we will. 

Score:13.75/20

Matilda (South Yarra) 10/2018

It's not usual that Sandra and I disagree about a restaurant to more than a minimal degree. Matilda, named after Scott Pickett's daughter, was the exception.

I liked the simple, understated decor, although the chairs could be uncomfortable there is plenty of cushioned seating around the walls.

The attempt at noise reduction with the sound absorbing ceiling is admirable and not unattractive 

but not very effective.
I found the quiet woodwork, Australian themed decor 

appealing and the toilets clean and attractively set out.

The food was not without it's problems. 
you can't go far wrong with oysters, which were fine

A kingfish ceviche had a lot of cucumber and other ingredients which were not kingfish. 

OK if you like cucumber a lot.
Octopus was a bit overdone

but nothing compared to the flat bread which was burnt. 

Excusable for a bush BBQ but I would never choose to eat charcoal as part of my meal at a restaurant.

Spanner crab, described as the go to dish in the current AGFG, is a delicate dish. Attractively served here, with plenty of crab meat,

the taste was drowned out by the accompanying sauce. 
A vegetarian mushroom dish was quite nice but for me the best dish by far was the duck served as a breast 

With the legs and a duck rillette served on a separate plate. 

 Score: Sandra 13.5 Elliot 15.5

Leoardoz (Wivenhoe - NW Tasmania) 11/2017

This is an unusually elegant looking cafe/wine bar in a 'village' that might reasonably be called a suburb of  Burnie being only a few kilometres from that town. It's on a side road separated by a little grass from the Bass Highway and The Bass Strait.

The clean modern lines of the exterior are mimicked in the L shaped restaurant.
There is a small open lounge area.

The remainder of the restaurant has good sized bare tables with paper serviettes and basic settings.
It was oddly discordant to have a 'Caution Wet Floor' sign in the middle of the restaurant, especially as the floor was not wet at all!

I started with a selection of deep fried dumplings which came with a sweet chili sauce and a sweet sour sauce and a small salad.

While the Soy sauce was very good with enough but not too much chilli the sweet sour sauce was only sweet. The salad had a pleasant sweet dressing. The spring roll and dumplings belonged in a fast food take away cafe.
Scotch fillet, 300 gm, 

was accompanied by an excellent mushroom sauce, I could have chosen a pepper, pan or smoky 
BBQ sauce. The potato chips were outstanding, hand cut they were hot and crisp. The steak was thiner than I would have liked but the chef managed to cook it very rare and much to my taste.
There is a cabinet with a good selection of cakes and biscuits.

A glass of Ghost Rock Pinot Noir added to the pleasure of the meal. The menu, and the wine list are small but quite adequate and from what I experienced, and saw they serve good size generally good looking food.
An oddity is a cabinet with small handbags and women's accessories. Evidently people do buy them.
I would be happy to come here again to try some of their other dishes. 
Score: 13.75/20

The Boat Club (Hervey Bay, Queensland) 05/2017

You get plenty of clues that you're getting to this popular club including a large billboard on the main road through Hervey Bay.  They even provide a free shuttle 

bus to bring people to the clubAt the end of the very large car park a sign welcomes you

and on it's other side thanks you for visiting. 
The club looks a bit like a ship with round 'porthole' windows. 

In side as well as several bars, and pokies, there is a Mexican restaurant, 

a large  no frills restaurant

and and a small, and even less frills, cafeteria

serving limited food and desserts.

It's got a very Australian rural club atmosphere.  Prices for members are about 10% less than for visitors but they're still cheap.  

Meals are quite large. I had fish and chips with a bowl of vegetables.

Four fillets of red skin snapper, lightly battered, were delicate, moist flavoursome and very fresh.  There was plenty of commercial tartar sauce. Vegetables were a little, but not grossly, over cooked Chips were crisp.  That, including gratis tea and coffee was a very decent meal for $16.50.  
Comments: Solid food at fair prices.
Score: 13.25/20

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

The Working Man's Club (Mildura) 04/2017

This club was established in 1895. Although ultimately it had the longest bar in Victoria, about 90 metres, because of a drought, the Murray was so low that, when it opened, no beer was available for almost six months! The club has a long history, intiimately related to Mildura. It has supported the city with donations at times of need and has been a centre of various notable activities. They still have an excellent billiard room. The great Walter Lindrum once played, and won, a competition here!
Their Bistro Cafe must seat well over 100 patrons. At 7.00 pm on Wednesday night it was very full, 

by 9.30 pm it was almost empty. People come, eat and leave, some to go to the adjacent area to 'invest ' in banks of poker machines.
It's run in the same way as many clubs and pubs.
There is an area to queue to order meals and pay, after leaving your table number, 

with a display case of cakes.

and a separate area for self serve salads and bread. 

There is a separate small bar where beverages are purchased. 
We ordered an anti pasti platter ($24.5) which was extremely large.

I would have liked more protein on the dish and both the eggplant and the peppers were very under seasoned.
They have a very large menu with an especially large menu for children. For my main course I chose lamb shanks which I find to be invariably well done in these sort of places.

 It was an excellent choice. A substantial serve with two large shanks and lots of root vegetables and tasty gravy. The shanks had been slow cooked to the point of perfection. If there is a problem with this dish it's that it's big enough for two!
Baked lamb chops with chips was on special.

 Comments: Just what I expect from a club/ bistro cafe
 Score: 13.5/20