Red Ochre
On the River Torrens here. Red Ochre is on top of another presumably less-salubrious restaurant - "Riverside".
This place is one of the few Native Australian restaurants in Adelaide. There's kangaroo, crocodile, and emu, which I haven't seen on a menu, or eaten.
native spinach, pumpkin & ricotta filled pasta with red pepper and tomato coulis, goats cheese, crisp carrot and spiced raisins.
This is rather strange. It's a wall of pie pastry, with a kind of a lasagne inside. It has a lot of ricotta cheese in it. I can't really work out what's going on in here, because there are so many components. There are four different components just sitting on top as garnish, and then there's the just slightly tart capsicum sauce underneath.
Nothing has a strong taste here, but it all tastes pleasant enough. The slightly zesty cream on top is probably the strongest flavour. I don't know what's going on here, so I just scoop it up and eat it, without trying to work out what it is.
Free drink. Because the waiter is my neighbour, and/or they therefore know I'm a food blogger. :)
(This is a tasting plate of four desserts.)
Lemon myrtle & rosella flower panna cotta.
Biscotti has nice pistachio taste. The rosella flower taste is a bit like rose, but has a nicer taste, and is much less pungent. The panna cotta is nice and creamy, and the slight lemon taste is great in a panna cotta. It doesn't fight with the rosella at all. This is a good nine. 9/10
Rich chocolate torte with candied sunrise lime.
This is a dense, chocolatey cake. Nothing amazing, but the lime adds a nice tang, if rationed out correctly with the cake. I decide to apply the lines of coulis to this part of the dessert to add more tang. 7/10
Wattleseed pavlova with poached apricot.
This has a strange earthy or almost spice-like taste. The outer crust is nutty and has a nice sugary crisp. The problem here is that the pavlova is just a giant scoop of cream. It's too rich, and has no internal texture. 4/10
Davidson plum sorbet with winter berry compote.
The sorbet is sweet and refreshing, and the berries are soft and tasty. The only problem here is that plum sorbet and berries are too similar in taste. I remain unimpressed by irrelevant toffee in desserts. 7/10
That was an amazing amount of complexity in a dessert that cost $17.
From a rating point of view, I like these tasting plates. It provides lots of information about the quality of the restaurant's food.