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

City Grill Room

City Grill Room

535 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne

(Ph) 9602 2228

We had relatives come visit from China and we wanted to take them to somewhere "Australian". What's more Australian than steak? =P Plus it's in the Entertainment book =) It's a very spacious restaurant, and caters well for large groups. Lighting was very dark, and I forgot my camera, so apologies for the iPhone pictures with the ridiculous flash.

All their mains are flavoured with CGR baste when grilled, served with choice of chips or baked potato. All steaks are pasture fed. P got the Eye Fillet (200g) $34, cooked rare. Sauces are $4.50 each - choices are mushroom, black pepper, monkeygland, creamy garlic, green pepper, danish blue cheese. P decided to be adventurous and got the Danish Blue Cheese =)

The steak was cooked perfectly, and the sauce was surprisingly really good! I've recently grown to like blue cheese... this sauce was so strong yet goes really well with steak... and chips!

I got the Pork Spare Ribs (2 Racks) $36

Gotta say it's one of the best ribs I've had in Melbourne! Can't compare with Hurricane's in Sydney but these were very meaty and juicy and not dry =) Too bad I didn't have a sauce to dip my chips in so I dipped it in P's blue cheese sauce - seriously delicious!

The relatives aren't used to "raw vegetables" so we didn't get a salad, but instead got Char-grilled Vegetables (mushroom, capsicum, zucchini, & a pumpkin slice) $9

Wow we were kinda expecting them to be a bit more generous - one skewer of vegetables? And a massive slice of pumpkin - hmm.

The relatives ordered Lamb Loin Chops and Eye Fillet, served with baked potato. The potato was the biggest potato I've ever seen - about 15cm long! It was very plain, wrapped in aluminium foil and wasn't even served with sour cream or anything to go with it..

Food~
7/10 - steaks and ribs are good here, and go for the blue cheese sauce! Chips are crunchy and delicious but don't go for the baked potato or any vegetables lol.

Atmosphere~
2/5 - more lighting would be nice =P

Service~
4/5 - waiters are very attentive and polite here =)

C.
xo

The Point

The Point

Aquatic Drive, Albert Park Lake

Ph 9682 5566

I came here at the start of the year for P's birthday but thought I'll post about it now here anyway since it's a 2 Chef's Hat Restaurant in the Age Good Food Guide 2011 and also awarded the Best Steak Restaurant award in 2010. 

We had an Entertainment buy-1-get-1-free card for this restaurant so we thought we'd give it a try. As you can probably guess, we had high expectations of this place =) 

I had booked a table and so we got a nice table by the window with a lakeside view - it was very romantic indeed with sail boats and swans swimming past us =)

We took forever deciding - we knew we had to have steak here because that was their specialty but there were so many to choose from! In the end we settled for a 900g steak to share - mistake on our behalf haha.

They gave us complimentary fig and rhubarb spring roll things - neither ingredients I like very much but it was free so no complaints.

Fig and rhubarb spring rolls

The waiter said our steak would take 20-30mins to slowly cook so P wanted to order an entree. He got the Western Plains suckling pig, grilled marron. sauce ravigote and carrots vichy and we shared it
.

Suckling pig

It was a very small portion because we shared it between us - the chefs separated it into two plates for us - but it was very tasty nonetheless, soft tender meat with the crunchy skin =)

Our steak to share was a 900g grain fed Clare Valley Rib Eye, baby gem salad, coarsely mashed potatoes, pink peppercorn sauce, carved at your table.

900g Rib Eye

And so we watched our waiter carve our steak in front of us - there was so much meat.

And here was my plate - we ordered rare and it came out medium rare - as expected but just how we wanted it. There was enough fatty bits to counter the tender soft rawish meat inside and the crunchy outside.

But there was wayyy too much for me to finish, too much that by the end of it I felt kinda sick and it wasn't very pleasant at all =(

Me with my plate of steak and all our sides

After we finished our meal I told P I wanted to walk for a bit to walk off all that steak. There was a revolving staircase behind the restaurant that links all the levels together. We thought we'd go and check it out but once we got to the top we kinda regretted it - it was very rickety and vibrating with the wind. But it was quite romantic watching the sunset from up there =)

On my way down - glad to be on solid ground again =)

Definitely one of the best steaks I've had but for anyone thinking of coming here - don't overfeed yourself or you'll regret it and it becomes not a very pleasant experience overall.

8/10

C.

xo