An exceptional gem in the South Coast / Nowra. I was happy that out of all the resturant's listed on visitnsw.com recommending places to eat that I spotted that this had been awarded One Chef Hat. Considering my recent dining experience at a hatted restaurant I was keen to come here.
The venue itself is great, very relaxed, casual-formal dining but also a nice hang out location for a drink.
We started off with fresh bread with hand churned butter ($3pp). The bread was very good, though the missus didn't appreciate the flavoured "tomato, rosemary, basil" turkish bread as much as I did.
The entree we decided to share was the Soft Shell Crab taco ($16). There are hardly words to decide how tasty and outstanding this was. To give you some context, my missus stated that this was the best soft shell crab dish she's ever had (better than Busshari) and upon finishing her last bite exclaimed that she missed it already. It had some light salsa and what I think was aioli. The salsa meant that it dripped a little - so watch out for that... but otherwise... mmm...
For the mains the missus had the Steamed Mussels with tomato, chorizo and chili ($24). "Spot on" exclaims the missus. The mussels were cooked perfectly and none were rubbery (a common problem with mussels). The more interesting fact was that the soup was delicious and had a well balanced flavour between tomato and chili and wasn't fishy at all. This is unusual as most places don't factor in how the end sauce tastes... it was good enough to dunk your bread into. I ask her what she didn't enjoy and the only downside she could come up with was that there was not enough chorizo (but that wasn't necessarily a chief ingredient).
I chose the Waygu brisket with coke glaze, chili and almond salad ($34). The moment I read that on the menu I was instantly thinking "I've never had Brisket before... and everything about that sounds great". When the dish arrived I got everything I imagined brisket to be, plus it was sweet due to the coke glaze. If you were to eat it without any sides the meat itself would be a tad too sweet, but given the clever chili and almond salad it was a perfect meal. I could help but smile as I wolfed it down.
We also ordered a side of Duck fat roast potates ($12). Now given the name and the quality of the other food we'd received this was a big let down. Duck fat implies you are going to get super crispy, super bad for you potatoes but what we received were not anything special. If you called them roast potatoes I wouldn't have noticed a difference. Kind of a shame, but not enough to detract from a 5/5 rating.
Now... after hearing my missus complain about the Soft Shell Taco's being so good I made the executive decision to order a second round of them for our dessert. Just as good, just as tasty as the first time.
Whilst paying our bill I asked to see the actual dessert menu and noted that there were a few things on there that sounded amazing.
One thing that frustrated me was the service the waitstaff provided. They were great at taking orders, bringing food, etc but really failed to maintain the service once we were seated. It took too long to flag one down to order food and get drink refills. Perhaps it's a minor point, but I think we've all been in that experience when it's impossible to get someone's attention... and all that was needed was someone walking around and looking at people.
Apart from that, we will have to come back and bring friends! read more