As is our usual Saturday night practice, M & I were discussing where to go for dinner that night (hey, I didn’t say we were the most organised people!). We then remembered that a couple of weeks beforehand, we had gone to the new Springs Tavern in Beechboro for a drink and thought the meals looked nice. Decision made!
We arrived just after 8pm and after grabbing a couple of menus, we sat down to decide what we were going to have. Inside is open plan and about half of the area inside is tables and chairs, the rest is filled with lounges and chairs for sitting to have a drink. It seemed quite busy and was filled with families having dinner. I did find the atmosphere a bit weird because as it is just one big room, there were people who had been drinking all day clearly, mixing with the people who had come in for a meal.
They had some specials of the day and the Grazing plate really stood out for us. It was $25 and had 4 dishes; chicken wrapped pancetta, mini pumpkin scones with dill cream and smoked salmon, chicken cacciatore sausage rolls and barramundi fish balls. For mains I ordered the Moroccan Prawn Salad ($22) and M ordered the Surf & Turf ($35). M also ordered a Principle wheat beer and as they only had the one cider there, I had a Strongbow. I did ask them for their cocktail list but nobody had been trained in how to make cocktails yet.
The tasting plate came out not too long after we placed our order. We had the mini pumpkin scones first and they were delicious. They were bite sized with the salmon and dill cream inside. Unfortunately it went a bit down hill from there. The chicken skewers were awfully dry and definitely needed the sauce they had in the centre of the platter. The sausage rolls weren’t even chicken, never lone chicken cacciatore! The fish balls were equally as dry as the chicken and I have my doubts on it being barramundi. We then crossed our fingers about our mains.
About 20 minutes later the mains came out, just after 9pm. I was happy when I saw my Moroccan prawn salad as they weren’t stingy with the prawns and had about 8 in the dish. M liked his Surf & Turf as well as they had a couple of big prawns on top.
We were the last diners in the area with the tables and about 5 minutes into our mains, a DJ started to play some funky house music. That was fine with us, we quite like that music. Then suddenly they turned the lights out on us. It wasn’t completely dark, but dark enough to not be able to see our meals properly as we were in the corner. They were obviously trying to turn it into a bar as the kitchen was closing. Then a staff member must have realised we were still eating and asked us if we wanted the lights turned back on! We told them yes, as they had just served us our meals and we wanted to see what we were eating!
As we felt like we were getting pushed out the door, we finished our meals quite quickly after that. We did however stay to finish our drinks but in the area away from the tables. I really think that they need to decide what they are doing with the place as I didn’t get any sense of direction. At the very least they should section off an area for the people eating food and people coming to have a drink. Would I go back? Maybe if I lived a bit closer. We have far too many options which are closer to home and are a lot nicer.
While i agree about how they need to deside if they are a pub or resturant i just want to bring you up on a one thing. Chefs can not call a dish something it isn't. If it says barramundi it's barramundi.
ReplyDeleteOf course they can call it whatever they like and serve what they like. Are you going to take it to a lab and have it tested? No, of course not. So it becomes your word against theirs. Because it is so hard to prove chefs serve wherever they have in hand if they are out of a dish. I am a venue manager who has worked in dozens of venues and while it is both illegal and unprofessional you have to be extremely naive to think it doesn't happen.
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