Week 6 - The Point

Okay, so this was Pete's pick this week and he had been wanting to try this restaurant since he saw it in the book. It is on Albert Park Lake and I thought it might be a bit far away, but Pete assured me it wasn't, so we decided that's where we would go.
Pete had to stay back and do some stuff at work so he called and arranged for me to get the tram outside work and he'd meet me on it when it got near him. Of course I worried because he had my train ticket, and this would be the time that inspectors got on and I'd be one of those many people with a good excuse like "my husband is getting on just up the road and he has my ticket" Anyway, I was saved and none got on and Pete did manage to find me on the tram. We only had about a 5 to 10 minute walk to the restaurant. Pete made a booking for 6pm and asked if we could have a table overlooking the lake....hmmm and I thought he isn't romantic! We were once again early so we sat on a bench outside and just watched the ducks and swans and rowers on the lake. I think Pete might have watched a few female walkers, but hey, I just said he was romantic, so I just checked out the guys :)
Now, when we were walking to the restaurant we noticed there was one table outside, it was cold out and I had a bit of a laugh as I imagined that was our table overlooking the lake..thankfully I was wrong! The restaurant itself was lovely and we had a corner table which had a view of the lake and the skyline of Melbourne..beautiful.
The waitress was called Krystal and she took our orders, brought us some water and was very nice.
She came back with a cup and saucer for each of us and said it was with the chef's compliments and would give us a boost before our meals. It was a mussel velute (thick soup)and there was also a mussel that seemed to be coated in tempura batter on the side. This was gorgeous and although Pete tried a bit, I finished his off. We also had fresh, hot rolls with oil to dip them in. Pete dipped, I didn't because I'd prefer butter.
For entrees I thought I'd try something different and ordered the smoked trout with seared scallops and Pete ordered a warm pea salad. Now I thought smoked trout meant it was cooked, but alas it wasn't and I didn't enjoy that very much. It also had some apple puree and sprouts and eating that with the scallops almost took away the taste the trout left in my mouth. Pete's salad was nice and had a mixture of peas, asparagus, brussel sprouts, beetroot and roasted nuts and raddichio lettuce with carrots. There was also a thin slice of potato on both our entrees which were described as paper potato. He enjoyed his and the mouthful I tried was nice.
With our mains, I had the slow cooked pork belly with pearl onions and shitake mushrooms and there was a hard piece on top of the pork which I found to my delight to be crackling! Pete had a well done Minute steak of pasture fed Porterhouse from Longford Tasmania,blue cheese, wild rocket and balsamic salad with a red wine shallot jam.
We thought we'd add two side dishes to this as we have learnt that there are not usually much of an accompaniment to the mains. This time we had home made spatzle,caramelised onions and gruyere cheese, and the other was steamed King Edward potatoes and herb butter.
For our wine we decided on a DeBortoli Rose.
Krystal also came round and gave us another bread roll between the entrees and the mains. I had seen that for a medium rare steak it could take 45 minutes, so I figured with Pete ordering well done that we could be there till Christmas.
We really enjoyed the main meals and the sides went very well with them. They weren't huge meals, but we were nicely satisfied...but there is always that tiny room for dessert :)
Pete surprised me and went straight for the chocolate dish, as that is what I would normally do. He had Valhrona dark mousse Malakoff, cumquat marmalade and blood orange icecream. I tried the Apple tarte tartin, star anise and cinnamon icecream,praline crumbs and vanilla espumas.
Krystal took our dessert orders and then came back with something she said would cleanse our palates. Some pineapple jelly with pina colada icecream. These did the job and were delicious to boot.
The desserts were very nice and we both tried each others..and I must say Pete's was yummy.

All in all a lovely evening, the service was excellent and the food (apart from the trout) was delicious, and the view was brilliant.

The meal, including the wine was $206.00