Hairy Canary
212 Little Collins St, Melbourne
(Ph) 9654 2471
A and a few other Brisbane people came down to Melbourne for a holiday - they couldn't decide what to eat for dinner, but in the end N suggested Hairy Canary, a Mediterranean restaurant, since they wanted meal and we figured there'd be heaps of lamb in Mediterranean cuisine? I didn't mind trying it out even though I kinda wanted Stalactites.
It's a very small restaurant - they only had one table that could cater for the 8 of us. They asked us if we wanted drinks or food as well - lol so I guess it's not that famous for their food?
We saw the next table had a paella which smelt delicious so we decided to try it, and since we had so many people, we thought we should get 2 paellas. The waitress was slightly rude and blunt to us at the beginning - C asked her to suggest some dishes and she sorta just shrugged and when she asked us what drinks we wanted and we said water she sorta looked blank =/ After a little while, she warmed up to us and suggested we order one of each of the 2 non-vegetarian paellas and some starters since the paellas would take 20mins to come out. C was super hungry so she suggested we get 3 pizzas which we all said was way too much - we settled for 2 pizzas. N had tried the pot of clams last time and said it was worth a try. M wanted her lamb which we didn't find much on the menu, and settled for some lamb skewers.
It was all wayyy too much food - I warned them, I said the paellas are meant for 2+ people, but what can you do when everyone was so hungry and your eyes are always hungrier than your stomach.
I saw the Eggplant chips with herb aoli on the starter menu and shot-gunned it - $12.50
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| Eggplant chips with herb aoli |
It was the first dish that came and 'cause everyone was starving, we all loved it. The eggplant retained its shape yet was still nice and soft on the inside - the crumbs were like a 10 herbs mix! Delicious with their herb aoli, so creamyyy - I love aoli =)
The Lamb & sujac pinchos with mojo picon came next - $15.50. We ordered 2 since there was only 5 skewers on each plate - that's the problem with dining with so many people.
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| Lamb & sujac pinchos with mojo picon |
Lamb pieces with lamb(?) sausage on skewers, with a tomato, capsicum mix over the top. Was alright - nothing too fantastic. Guess we got our meat fix here =P
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| Seafood paella with diamond clams, Spanish mackerel, fresh seafood and aromats |
I don't remember the last time I had paella - I actually don't know what's so special about them. Sorta just like a fancy fried rice. The Spanish mackerel was nice - tasted quite fresh! And the little prawns in the middle of the dish was very tasty too - they deep fried them so you could eat the whole prawn like it was a chip =) Though the clams were a disappointment - or more like there were lots of bits of shell within the rice and I bit hard into many little shell bits and nearly broke my teeth... bleh. And there were all these little hard bits in amongst the rice, like egg shells but not really - don't think they were more shell bits 'cause they were quite small but very annoying. Didn't enjoy it very much in the end.
The second paella came within a minute of the first - Paella de Granada y Jerez $48.00. I didn't even realise the price or I would have said something but anyway =/ The waitress just said they "serve 3 paellas here, the seafood special, the Granada one which has more meat in it, and a vegetarian one", so we of course chose the 2 non-vegetarian ones.
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| Paella de Granada y Jerez |
So the Granada paella was not what we expected. We did not expect more seafood in it, let alone a whole crab in it =/ I didn't eat much of this dish, could not be bothered with the crab. There were small bits of chorizo and other "meats" in the paella but it was not what we expected - we thought it'd be full of lamb etc etc. And this one was slightly spicy - wish the waitress would explain things a little better =/
The Warm bread with 3 hairy dips $15.50 came when we were halfway into our paellas already - what kinda starter comes after the mains?! And how hard was it to give us some bread and dips =/
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| Warm bread with 3 hairy dips |
So when the dips came, we were all so busy trying the paella that we had left the bread to cool and harden - we really shouldn't have ordered this it was excessive and really not worth $15.50. The dips were nice and everything, but we ended up leaving so much of the bread 'cause we had just ordered too much food =( That's the trouble of eating as a big group =(
The wood-fired pizzas came next. I didn't even know what pizzas we ordered - M just chose them, she ended up getting along very well with the rude and blunt waitress lol. We got the Lebanon - marinated lamb, red onion, mint & harissa yoghurt $23.50
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| Lebanon - marinated lamb, red onion, mint & harissa yoghurt |
There was not much meat or anything on the pizza - what a disappointment. The pizza's not cut into slices and since it was super crispy, it was really hard to cut - not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. There really wasn't enough toppings or cheese or anything on the pizza - definitely not worth $23.50. The crispy crust went well with the dips from the other dish though, but as a dish itself really wasn't that great.
We also got the Rigg-a-mortis pizza - harissa, smoked rabbit, radicchio & parmesan $23.50
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| Rigg-a-mortis - harissa, smoked rabbit, radicchio & parmesan |
Really not sure why M ordered smoked rabbit pizza =/ It was so dry and the smoked rabbit and radicchio just fell off the pizza when you picked up a slice, and the base was a strange chilli sauce. The smoked rabbit was so tough and tasted of nothingness, and the radicchio was so bitter - what a strange combination of ingredients. The only nice part of the pizza was the shaved parmesan and the crispy crust - I gotta say their crust is delicious, but what's a pizza without good toppings?
The clams came last - Morcilla sausage & wild clams with torn bread, chilli & herbs $18.00
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| Morcilla sausage & wild clams with torn bread, chilli & herbs |
This was a fairly good dish - kinda a strange combination of clams and sausage with a sultana bun in the tomato sauce. The sultana bun was quite tasty - toasted up and soaked in the tomato sauce, but it didn't seem to go well with the rest of the dish. The clams and sausage were alright - nothing too fancy.
All in all, was not that fantastic a meal. And definitely not worth the money we paid. We paid $28 each - I did not feel I ate that quality food. And I'm pretty sure they overcharged us - when I saw the bill, there was definitely an item that was $53.00. I wasn't aware that the time, but when I came home and looked at the photos of the menus I took, the most expensive dish we ordered was the Paella de Granada y Jerez for $48.00 and that definitely does not match up. That's one dish that I remember, not sure about the rest, but when i manually totaled it up, they had charged us $30 extra overall. The waitress did vaguely say something about upgrading the paellas to a larger serving but we said we didn't want to and instead just order 2 paellas - so that doesn't counter for the discrepancy. And they couldn't have served us a larger serving anyway, 'cause our paella dish was the same size as the one on the next table!
*sigh*
Definitely not coming here again - but it was good to see all these Brisbane friends again!
4.5/10
C.
xo
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