The Blue Room

The Blue Room

279 Clarendon St, South Melbourne

(Ph) 9699 4036

I bought a Groupon Voucher - $59 for Three Course Modern Australian Dinner for Two People with a Glass of Wine Each. The entree is set but we get to choose our mains and dessert from the menu, all except the Eye Fillet.

I had read their service was a bit slow but we came quite early on a weekday so service was actually not too bad. They're famous for the wood-fired pizzas here (can see the oven in the picture below) but we'd had too much pizza recently so decided to try something else.

Neither P or I particularly drink wine so we asked the waiter if we could change it to a non-alcoholic drink but she said no =/ how weird is that isn't a juice or Coke cheaper than a glass of wine?!

We were started with a shared entree tasting plate which we didn't get to choose.
Saganaki - pan fried kefalograviera cheese with charred lemon and tomato salsa
Salt and pepper calamari - served with lemon aioli
Pork and veal meatballs - roast pepper and tomato sauce with salsa verde
Tempura prawns - tiger prawns in tempurra batter served with wasabi mayonnaise

They didn't really give us all the side sauces mentioned in the menu, instead just gave us a lemon aioli which was delicious and went well with it all. The saganaki was a little salty eaten by itself but the rest was all very delicious - a nice tasting of a few entrees =)

P went for the Porterhouse Steak 350g - char-grilled to your liking with crispy chips, salad and red wine jus $29.90

The steak was cooked perfectly to medium rare, a little more jus would have been nice though. Chips were deliciously crunchy but slightly soft inside =)

I got the Pork Belly Clay pot - pork served with canellini beans, chorizo sausages and vegetables served with char grilled Turkish bread $25.50

Pretty impressive looking, but they were not very generous with the pork belly, and with the few pieces there were, they were mainly fat and not much meat or crackling =( Few slices of chorizos which was good, "vegetables" was not really existent - it was mainly a pot of canellini beans =/ I should have gone for the Lamb Shank Clay pot instead!

We were pretty full after our mains (the beans and the bread and the chips were all carbs!) but our dessert came. I got the Soft Centred Chocolate Pudding - with house made honeycomb and vanilla ice-cream $12

This was delicious - though the chocolate inside wasn't as runny as I thought it'd be. The home made honeycomb was delicious - love honeycomb!

P got the Chocolate Fudge Brownie - served with berry coulis and vanilla mascapone $10

I had read good reviews about this but it wasn't that special, a very rich brownie, P thought there'd be more berry and sourness to cut the sweetness a bit, Should have gone for the Vanilla Creme Brulee instead of 2 chocolate desserts - was way too rich!

Food~

7/10 - not too bad given we were on a voucher, will come back for their pizzas another time!

Service~

3/5 - not bad, but why can't they change our wines to a non-alcoholic drink?!

Atmosphere~

3/5 - quite a nice restaurant in South Melbourne

C.

xo