The Pot Food & Wine

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I normally don’t do TFR on Saturdays, but since I haven’t done anything else of note today, I thought I’d head out.

The place is very busy, and after a twenty minute departure, there’s still zero seats available. Not even a bar seat or other crappiness. I am, however, directed to the bar next door. The waiter will come and get me.

Place is super-dark, so expect some crappy flash photography. :)

After an hour all up, I pop in, and a table is free.

The waitress is too busy to tell me what’s good, so I scrutinise the menu for a while. A huge proportion of the dishes here contain coriander or chilli, and others are crispy-skin fish, which I had last time.

SLOW ROASTED HAY VALLEY LAMB
5/10

Macaroni & cheese.

This is on a menu of fancy stuff, so I’m going to assume it’s not what it sounds like. It’s too loud in here to ask questions.

Whew. It’s just parsley.

The cheese here has a strong cheesy flavour. The actual cheese on top has a cooked cheese flavour, but no crisp or nice texture that would help it enhance a dish that already contains a lot of cheese. The dish is somewhat on the salty side.

The carrot is very close to raw. It crunches up into cubes in my mouth, but those cubes are slightly soft.

The shredded lamb is slightly chewy, but with a bit of salt, has a small degree of that nice “meat plus salt” flavour. The sauce in the bottom of the pan has been reduced a long way, and is very concentrated. Not inedibly so, but it is strong.

I make the waitress pick one of the two desserts for me. It’s tapioca with ice cream and sorbet, or raspberry soufflé.

BLACK SESAME TAPIOCA
5/10

With ice cream, rice noodles, lychee.

The wild and hairy noodles taste like slightly salty fruit loops. The unappetising olive-green tapioca isn’t sweet, and doesn’t have any pleasant flavour of its own. I combine it with the coconut ice cream, and noodles, but the noodles stand out, and the tapioca just mutes the sweetness of the ice cream.

The other scoop is pineapple sorbet. It’s nowhere sweet enough to support the bland tapioca, so eat it mostly by itself.

This was a truly bizarre combination of flavours. I really feel like this would’ve been better if it were much simpler. Just the ice cream and tapioca would’ve made a dessert that was plenty-unusual enough, without adding pineapple sorbet it crazy fruit loop straws.

:(
Noise (Music up loud,and sometimes piercing. Poor acoustics amplify patrons’ noise.)