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.