Week 1- Allegro

We had decided that we would take it in turns of choosing the restaurant to go to and the first week was my pick. We want to try as many as we can from the gold section of our 'entertainment guide' Allegro is situated at 205 Collins St, Melbourne. Pete met me after work and we took the tram up Collins Street and only had to walk across the road from the tramstop. We were fairly early as I had booked the table for 6pm and as I finished work at 5, and we didn't have to wait long for a tram, we had heaps of time to kill. Pete walked me up to see where the restaurant 'Fifteen' is. He had gone there for lunch a few months back with his work. After doing this, we still had time so thought we'd go and sit down and grab a coffee. Allegro is on the 1st floor of the Westin Hotel, and as we went in the front doors of the hotel we noticed they had a bar/coffee lounge so we thought we might sit there and get our coffee and wait till 6. We walked to the bar and a dressed up waiter met us and showed us to a table and then gave us menus. We looked through them because all we wanted was a flat white, and all they had in the way of coffee was espresso, so we gave up on the idea of coffee and went to another section of the ground floor and sat till it was time to head up to the restaurant. I must admit I was a bit wary of the restaurants that are in the gold section of our guide, as they are all referred to as fine dining. The finest dining I had ever been to was the clean tables in McDonalds...haha just kidding, but nonetheless I was wondering what it would be like. We were met by a friendly waitress who took us to our table, near the window that overlooked Collins St. She then placed our serviettes on our laps and gave us our food and wine menus, and also asked if we'd like some iced water. She left and we had a look over the menus and decided on which main we wanted and also dessert. We thought three courses might be too much. We did however order 2 side dishes. One was truffle cauliflower mornay gratin and the other was tempura sweet potato with wasabi mayonnaise. For our mains, Pete chose blue cheese crusted veal loin with champ potatoes, beer battered onion rings and port syrup
and I had panseared fillet of barramundi served on a fricassee of brussel sprouts, bacon and mussels with a verjuice nage. We had a waitress by this stage called Jean, and she was very helpful, especially when we put the choice of wine in her hands. As I was having fish she suggested a Madfish Chardonnay and as Pete had Veal, she suggested a Madfish Cabernet Sauvignon. After she took our orders, we had some bread and oil/seeds/balsamic vinegar brought to the table, which were very welcome as we were quite hungry. Who ever decides on these lovely crispy white tablecloths needs to rethink it, especially when some clumsy people will inevitably splash a bit of black dressing onto the abovementioned tablecloths. Yeah, right! take me anywhere :)
We didnt have to wait long at all until the mains arrived. And when we saw the size of them we were glad that we had ordered the side dishes, but when they arrived however, they were huge, but delicious. I especially liked the tempura sweet potatos, which really were like very delicately battered potato cakes, and the mayonnaise was just creamy enough to compliment them perfectly. The mains were both plated up high in layers, so there was plenty of room around the plates to load up with the sides. What we are trying to do is taste different things and the flavours of all the things on the plate were really delicious and we both enjoyed them immensely.
When it came to ordering dessert, we thought we'd try a tasting plate. This meant we got 3 different desserts to try,. These were, cappuccino cheesecake with baileys irish cream custard sauce ,also, warm lemon and rosemary pudding with double cream and raspberry compote, and finally chocolate & hazelnut dacquoise with mango salsa . These were all very yummy, and although the servings weren't huge, we were very full when we left.

The meal, including wine and a tip cost $160.

We left there around 7.20pm, meaning we just missed the 7.25 train home. Finally grabbed that coffee at a kiosk at the station and caught the 8.25 train , arriving home at around 9.15.

We both enjoyed the evening and our selection of food and new tastes. The service was very efficient and we would highly recommend it.