If you’re look­ing for a fair­ly afford­able din­ner, let me rec­om­mend the Recov­ery Room in New­town to you. We’ve only men­tioned it  before in a post that we archived due to infight­ing, so it’s time to talk about the food.

Dur­ing the day the cab­i­nets are stuffed with large fresh-look­ing sand­wich­es and lus­cious cakes for food on the go, but there’s also a menu offer­ing stan­dard cafe food. I stopped in for a quick din­ner the oth­er night, and was delight­ed with what I found. The Recov­ery Room is BYO sev­en days a week, but if you did­n’t bring your own bot­tle, they have a black­board wine list that we think is based on the spe­cials on Vine Online, offer­ing an inter­est­ing selec­tion with all bot­tles at $32 and glass­es for $8.

To eat, I had pork bel­ly with cele­ri­ac slaw and crushed potatos. The pork was moist and fell apart beau­ti­ful­ly, but it real­ly need­ed a good grilling to get the crack­ling going prop­er­ly. My moth­er had the fish of the day, which was ware­hou, cooked with lemon juice and capers. Both serv­ings were gen­er­ous and the flavours were excel­lent, good val­ue for $23.50 each. We did­n’t real­ly need the grilled sour dough bread with bal­sam­ic and olive oil, but it was tasty nev­er­the­less. The dessert menu fea­tured white choco­late creme brulee and rhubarb crum­ble, but we were too full to indulge. Ser­vice was friend­ly, and the room was warm. The Recov­ery Room does all the things a neigh­bour­hood cafe should do. Noth­ing’s too fussy or frilly, the sim­ple flavours of the food stand for them­selves.