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.