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.