So y’all asked for more food reviews with pics, so today I am going to do short reviews of the fol­low­ing places:

  1. The Ambe­li
  2. The Grill at the Dux­ton
  3. Lager­field as a func­tion venue
  4. St John’s Restau­rant

I hope you don’t mind that I’ve put them all in one post.

The Ambeli

If I had to use one word to describe the Ambe­li, it would prob­a­bly be “sub­lime”. And I don’t mean that in a love-is-what-I-got surfer-who-smokes-too-much-pot kind of way either. Every­thing about a recent birth­day din­ner there was exquis­ite, from the fan­tas­tic wait staff, to the incred­i­bly detailed food to the expen­sive hand soap and mois­turis­er in the ladies’ room. Seri­ous­ly, places should nev­er under­es­ti­mate how much more beloved they can become by putting a lit­tle thought into their toi­lets. One of the rea­sons I love Ele­ments so much is that there are tam­pons, spray-on deodor­ant and hand cream in their bath­rooms, and one rea­son that The Apart­ment Bar los­es a cou­ple of points is that they use fab­ric hand tow­els behind glass as a design fea­ture but only have air dry­ers in their toi­lets.

But back to the Ambe­li. Their bread plate con­tains bread­sticks with squid ink knead­ed in so they take on the appearence of gnarled tree branch­es — so pret­ty! Even though we were order­ing prob­a­bly the cheap­est wine on the menu (Armantes ‘Old Bush-Vine’ Gar­nacha at $45, it is not a cheap night out), the wait­er was still able to tell us an adorable sto­ry about how the grapes for that par­tic­u­lar wine were grown on bush­es, not vines, and so were less high main­te­nance and there­fore more afford­able. We ate halou­mi and salu­mi to start with, and then the rest of the fam­i­ly opt­ed for beef and lamb while I went for duck in a buck­wheat crepe with cher­ry sauce. It was out­stand­ing­ly deli­cious. When we some­how found room for cheese, a selec­tion was brought out on a board for us to drool over and sniff (it was all French and lus­cious­ly stinky) before we select­ed what we want­ed, and they did­n’t appear to mind us demand­ing see “the Cheese Man!” instead of a fro­magi­er giv­en that my pro­nun­ci­a­tion is almost as bad as my spelling. It was an expen­sive din­ner, but it was absolute­ly worth it. Oh yes indeedy.

The Chocolate Buffet at the Grill at the Duxton

Pre­vi­ous­ly I have found Dux­ton staff to be real­ly great. Not any more. I decid­ed to take my sis­ter to the Choco­late Buf­fet as a birth­day present, so I rang up almost a week in advance to ask for a table at 7pm on a Sat­ur­day night. They said they were going to be real­ly full then, and offered 8.30pm instead. Okay, I under­stand you can’t always get the times you want, that’s fine. But what I did­n’t expect was that when we got there, the restau­rant was less than half full and yet we were shown to the table clos­est to the door which was­n’t even set up prop­er­ly. The smarmy guy by the door said he’d get us menus and drinks lists, and that we could help our­selves to the buf­fet. I want­ed to order bub­bly, so we wait­ed for a drinks list. And we wait­ed. And we wait­ed. We grabbed the info cards that oth­er tables had on them — and a nap­kin for me, and moved around so we weren’t quite so much in the draft. No sign of the menus. Mean­while staff were clus­tered around the front desk gos­sip­ing and stu­dious­ly avoid­ing our “we would like some atten­tion please” stare. Some­how we man­aged to flag a wait­er down to get a wine list, and of course there was a long wait before we could order. Then when he was pour­ing, the bub­bly over­bub­bled and over­flowed. Nice work, bud­dy.

But of course, we weren’t real­ly there for the ser­vice (luck­i­ly), we were there to gorge our­selves sil­ly on choco­late. So how was it? Well, it was okay. Would­n’t the words “crepe sta­tion” sug­gest to you that they’d be cook­ing them in front of you, not “reach­ing under some glad­wrap to pull out one they pre­pared ear­li­er”? Yeah. Nev­er­the­less, there was plen­ty of good­ness to be had. I espe­cial­ly enjoyed the choco­late bread & but­ter pud­ding. The Mars Bar Creme Brulee bore no resem­b­lence to Creme Brulee at all, but they should be applaud­ed for hav­ing such a large range of gluten-free food. Also good: eat­ing stacks of pineap­ple to pre­tend that the enzymes would dis­solve the food alrady in your stom­ach to make room for more. We dis­cov­ered that the staff were very quick in clear­ing away our plates, like they thought that would stop us eat­ing or some­thing. Ha! Did­n’t they know we’re half Scot­tish and all cheap? But of course that lev­el of rapid ser­vice dis­ap­peared when we went to pay the bill. When they did­n’t add our bot­tle of wine to the bill, I was very tempt­ed not to point out their mis­take to them because they’d been so incom­pe­tent, but decid­ed it would be bet­ter for my kar­ma if I spoke up. Did they thank me? No. I won’t both­er going back.

Lagerfield as a function venue

We’ve reviewed Lager­field before, and were real­ly real­ly impressed with both the food and the ser­vice, so I was super excit­ed that the Girl Geek Din­ner was going to be held there. I was even more excit­ed when I saw a sign out the front that said it was BYO on Wednes­days for peo­ple eat­ing din­ner, so I dou­blechecked and then popped up to Glen­gar­ry where they had deli­cious Brook­fields Ries­ling at a ridicu­lous $11.90 a bot­tle. So far so good. And then the wait­er showed up.

He was quite pos­si­bly the most odi­ous ser­vice man I have encoun­tered since a hair dress­er in Wadestown told me 17 years ago that I was a naughty lit­tle girl for not keep­ing my head still when he made me stand up so he could cut my hair. The wait­er yelled at us all to be qui­et, call­ing us “ladies” in that most patro­n­is­ing of ways, so he could tell us that steaks would be served medi­um rare as would the tuna. Lat­er on he would call peo­ple “Ma’­dam” when he deigned to speak to us at all — my main was silent­ly slammed down in front of me very dis­taste­ful­ly. There were fifty of us Geek Girls, so we filled the entire restau­rant, and Amber had arranged to use the venue soundsys­tem and mike for the pre­sen­ta­tions peo­ple were to give dur­ing the course of the night. The mike, how­ev­er, had oth­er ideas, and even though it was turned up as far as pos­si­ble, we still could hard­ly hear a word. This was made much worse by the music that was turned right up in the bar. If Lager­field pitch­es itself as a venue to hold func­tions in, then it needs to do much much bet­ter to actu­al­ly cater to those func­tions. Peo­ple all around the room asked if the music could be turned down a lit­tle in the bar. At one stage, it was turned up loud­er. When I point­ed this out to the wait­er, he gave me a look of death. My friend was like “did he just curl his lip up at you?”. Yes, yes he did. He was a total and utter fuck­nuck­le. I haven’t expe­ri­enced such a surly lev­el of ser­vice any­where else.

That said, our wait­ress Dot was amaz­ing. When my friend’s food was cold, she took it away apol­o­gis­ing, and brought out a hot one rapid­ly, apol­o­gis­ing again. She worked the room well with a mobile eft­pos machine, tak­ing drink orders (bril­liant idea at a func­tion like ours), and apol­o­gised pro­fuse­ly for the sound prob­lems. She was friend­ly, effi­cient and a per­fect rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all the things that was wrong with the wait­er.

Oh, and the food itself? The mixed plat­ters were nice, and I love that they serve a cheese gratin, because isn’t a gratin the art of cook­ing some­thing with cheese and cream? Awe­some. My mush­room & goats’ cheese was very flavour­some and frothy, and the apple crum­ble dessert was nice, but not out­stand­ing. Mrs Cake was at the same event, and wrote much more elo­quent­ly about the food. Go to Lager­field for din­ner on a Wednes­day so you can bring your own wine, but if you encounter that hor­ri­ble wait­er, you should def­i­nite­ly put in a com­plaint. I wish I had.

St John’s Restaurant

Hav­ing had a glass or two of wine at the Girl Geek Din­ner, the next day when I saw a review of St John’s entry into Burg­er Welling­ton, I knew I need­ed to eat it STRAIGHT AWAY, so I enlist­ed my fam­i­ly and we went along to St John’s that night. DISASTER! BURGERGATE 2010! The burg­er is only on their lunch menu! Argh! Imag­ine my pain that I was forced to eat this instead:


That, my lovelies, beau­ti­ful­ly pho­tographed by Bam­bi, is a $36 trio of Wild Hare Welling­ton on a mush­room tart, Pis­ta­chio and spinach lamb cut­lets on gar­lic mash and Wagyu ten­der­loin carpac­cio with diced beet­root and wasabi mayo. It was pret­ty awe­some. The hare was incred­i­bly intense, per­haps because of the Welling­ton-ness of it, and the lamb was a lit­tle too blue instead of pink for my tastes, but oh, that carpac­cio, oh wow. Oth­ers in the fam­i­ly dined on scal­lops, and aranci­ni and pork bel­ly with scal­lops, and so I got to get a whole lot more ani­mals in my mouth as well. Just no burg­er. Dammit. But I’ll be back, because the ser­vice was love­ly, and I am sali­vat­ing in antic­i­pa­tion.