Crusoe's
On the lake's edge here, at West Lakes. This is the only restaurant in this part of town that's in my Top 50.
Waitress asks me if I'd like to see the specials. But I know the best stuff is on the tried-and-tested menu, not on the specials list that the chef might've thought up this morning.
Pan seared fillet on wakami seaweed with coconut rice, bok choy and char grilled king prawn.
The prawn has a nice soft yet crunchy texture.
The fish is just cooked fish, but it has a nice thin layer of crisp, and sits in a very salty, seafoody brown sauce. The sauce is too salty on its own, but adds some flavour to the fish.
The tendrils of seaweed are a bit squishy and crunchy, but they also sit in the salty sauce, and are a but too salty to eat.
With the speed with which this dish was served, it seems likely that the long grain rice was cooked earlier. It's not that bad, but it's lost a lot of its texture, and is a little on the crumbly side. The rice soaks up too much of the salty sauce to allows to combine the two, so I mainly eat the rice by itself.
White, milk and dark chocolate Bavarois set on a sponge base, served with Bailey's cream and vanilla ice cream.
My effortlessly correct pronunciation of "bavarois" impresses the waitress. :) I'm sure they've had a whole week of "I'll 'ave the ‘bavveroys' thanks luv."
The bavarois is a large and fairly solid chocolate mousse. The ice cream is the standard fancy vanilla bean ice cream rafts fairly common at restaurants these days. However, as I completely expected, ice cream and mousse just don't oh together. They're both reasonable on their own, so I eat them separately.
The Baileys cream is like white chocolate, but without any sweetness, and the texture of ricotta cheese. It has a very faint Baileys taste. It's not distasteful, but it's not worth trying to comprehend or eat.
I'll give this a more appropriate name — "Chocolate mousse with scoop of ice cream and sprinkling of other irrelevant components."