Inglewood Hotel

A special occasion had come and gone but my family hadn’t had a chance to get together and celebrate as we had been quite busy. It was then decided that we would all go to the Beaufort Street Steakhouse for a meal on the upcoming Sunday night. I made the call to place a booking and as I was listening to the answering machine message I thought I heard it isn’t open on Sundays.  I quickly jumped on their website (http://www.bssh.com.au/ - which is currently either not working or has been taken down?) and discovered that it is indeed not open on Sundays, only Tuesday to Saturday.

We quickly tried to think of somewhere to go for dinner that would have menu options that keep everyone happy. After scratching our heads for a few minutes a light bulb appeared above my head when I thought of going to the Inglewood Hotel, also located on Beaufort Street. So I made the booking, changed our plans and we were good to go. 

We seemed to arrive all at the same time and found that a table had been reserved in the restaurant section for us. Our menus were waiting for us at the table ready to be pored over and not long after that, a bottle of champagne ready to be poured. There is a great atmosphere at the Inglewood. For plenty of people it is their local, the place to be when they want to relax with a drink and also patrons like us who wanted to catch up over a meal. I find that the Inglewood has the perfect balance between formal and informal. 

After eating at the Inglewood previously, I knew from experience that the platter to share was already going to be ordered. The plate is $32 but came with sweet corn and crab cakes, arancini balls with red pepper aioli, sticky pork belly, tempura prawns, cinnamon duck breast, tortilla chips and dip. The harder decision was going to be what I was going to get for mains when there are so many good choices on the menu.  M decided to order the Beef and Guinness Pie ($18), my dad had the Lamb Medallions served with vegetables and carrot puree ($28), mum had the Squid Rings with mango salad ($25) and my brother D had the Seafood Laksa ($22). I decided to try their Steak Sandwich ($19) which has been voted WA’s best steak sandwich for the past three years. 

 

We ended up ordering 2 of the shared platters for the 5 of us to share and I really wish I had taken pictures of the platters but I didn’t. To describe the platter in one word would be "eurghf". That is because you are too busy eating the platter to be able to talk. After devouring them ever so quickly, we spoke about what our favourite item on the platter was and it was different for all of us. My dad preferred the tortilla chips, I would choose the duck breast and pork belly, my brother liked the arancini balls and M loved the prawns. 

Seafood Laksa

Within a good amount of time our main meals appeared before us. I immediately had food envy of the Laksa.  The first thing you will notice are the big chunks of seafood and vegetables in the bowl, it was hard to see the soup component! D graciously let me have some and it tasted better than it looked. 

 Lamb Medallions

 Beef and Guinness Pie

 Squid Rings

 Steak Sandwich

My Steak sandwich served with big potato wedges was good but to be honest, I was so full and satisfied from the platter that I could only had a small portion of it. M said his Beef and Guiness pie served with the chips was nice and my mum really loved her squid with the mango salad.  My dad used my leftover wedges to dip in the sauce left on his plate and I am sure, if my mum let him get away with it, he would have picked the plate up and licked it clean!

We were offered the menus to look at the desserts but I don’t think any of us could have had some even if we wanted to! 

I would still like to try the Beaufort Street Steakhouse but I don’t think there were any of us wishing we had gone to there instead and we definitely made the right move going to the Inglewood.  All of us would certainly go back there again, 5 stars!

Royal East Perth - Strawberry Daiquiri Sunday!

Recently all the weekends have been sensationally sunny and on one particular Sunday, my friend K and I wanted to go somewhere for a drink where we could sit in the sun and have a few cocktails. We decided on the Royal in East Perth as it is on the water and is quiet enough to have a good chat as well.

We arrived at about 3pm, paid our $6 for an hour and a half of parking and managed to get a table in the sun.  A waiter helped us with some menus and soon after we decided to share a tasting plate. I can't remember how much it was but I think around $30. I did remember to take a picture but not before we started hoeing into it already! The plate was nice, it had chorizo, which was nice and crispy, along with satay chicken, quiche, olives and bread with dips. 

I ordered a glass of champagne (les petites vignettes crémant nv  burgundy, France) which was $11 and K ordered a Strawberry Daiquiri ($18.40). 

As soon as the drinks had come out I wished I had ordered the same! Hers was decorated with a cherry as well as a strawberry on the top. Needless to say that when it came to ordering for the next round, I decided to get one.  The cocktails were nice and refreshing with a good kick to them. As I wasn’t driving I could indulge in a few more than K.  I did find it odd though that the cocktails had very exact prices. There were some on the menu priced at $19.55! 

At about 4:30, when our parking was due to be topped up, we decided to go for a drive to the Inglewood so we wouldn’t have to keep paying for parking.  It turned out to be a good move as the Daiquiris were only $15 and they were a lot nicer.  Keep in mind that this opinion is from someone who consumed 5 or 6 during the day! 

The Royal is a nice place to go for a meal and the view in Claisebrook Cove is awesome. I will definitely be going back there but if it is for cocktails I may just stay more local and head to the Inglewood. 

Rembrandt Polish Restaurant

A couple of weeks ago, on a chilly Saturday night, M and I were trying to find somewhere to go for dinner when I thought I would use my Urbanspoon application and have a bit of a lucky dip. It came up with a place in Inglewood called Rembrandt and described it as Eastern European food. After reading some of the reviews we realised it was Polish food and decided to head down there and take our chances on getting a table for two.

After finding the restaurant (it is near Mondo’s the butcher) and finding a park, we went inside and found a dimly lit restaurant with a few people sitting down. We spoke to one of the waitresses but she told us we would have to come back another time as they were full tonight. BOO!

Fast forward to last Friday night when we were going through the usual process of discussing where we would go to dinner. M remembered about Rembrandt and booked a table for the two of us at 7:00pm. Success! I had never had Polish before but I love trying new things so was looking forward to the meal.

Upon entering the restaurant we saw it was quite empty but there were quite a few reserved markers on those empty tables. We were greeted by a friendly waitress who then took us to a table for two, near the rear of the restaurant. We were then handed two menus, including the drinks menu. This is probably a good time to mention that it is BYO alcohol so we ended up ordering a coke and ginger beer.

Looking around the dimly light restaurant it had quite simple décor. There were candles on each table which created a bit of ambience, along with paintings on the walls behind us and vodka bottles on the shelves in front of us.

 

We were then served a starter of a small dish filled with lard and pork pieces, with two pieces of bread on the side. Interesting. I sampled a small piece of the bread with a tiny amount on top but I realised immediately it wasn’t to my taste. It was simply fat with little pieces of bacon in it. M quite liked it though so he had my share and then the rest.

After perusing the menu for a while I had decided to order the Vegetarian Croquette ($9.50) for starters and then the Pierogi ($13.00) for main course. These are traditional Polish dumplings and I ordered some with meat and some with cheese and potato. I also spotted they had Polish doughnuts on the menu which I thought sounded quite interesting. M ordered the same entrée but the Hunters Stew ($12.00) as a main meal. This was on the menu as ‘traditional beef, pork and sauerkraut Polish stew with wild mushrooms red wine served with potatoes or rye bread.

The Croquette was quick to come out and I discovered that it was served with a cup of Borsch next to it. I had never had Borsch before and the reason for this is that I don’t really like beetroot. Anyway, I still tried it but only a sip. Definitely tasted like beetroot. The Croquette was different to how I expected it to be but it was very nice. It had a crispy outside and inside was soft and cheesy with little pieces of mushrooms inside. It also had a strong pepper flavour.

After finishing our entrée we didn’t have to wait long for our main meals to come out. My Pierogi came out first and my immediate reaction was to pick up the little dumplings and eat them with my fingers. Common sense prevailed and I used my knife and fork to spread the sour cream (which was on the plate along with a salad) over the dumplings.

M’s meal appeared soon after and his arrived inside the bread roll, in the middle of the plate. The top of the bread roll was cut off so you could take it off and eat the stew from the middle. 

The dumplings were quite nice with my favourite of the two being the meat ones which had minced meat inside. The salad on the side acted more as decoration than a side salad. On the menu it did say that there were 7 dumplings that come with the meal but I had closer to 12! Needless to say, I got very full, very quickly! I tried M’s stew and it was ok but I was glad I didn’t order it. It was a very heavy meal with a lot of it too.

I was so full after a couple of the dumplings that I stopped eating them, especially as I wanted to order some of the Polish doughnuts. I then asked if I could take a ‘doggy bag’ home with the leftover dumplings and if we could see the dessert menu. Then after seeing the menu I realised the doughnuts were only available on the weekend. Devastated!

I was glad that we went to Rembrandt’s. As I mentioned before, I had never had Polish food before and I am glad I can mark it off the list of things to try. The waitresses were very nice and the service was great. The only reason I wouldn’t go back is because I don’t think the food was quite to my taste.

Cue Bar - Inglewood

After our dinner at Big Bowl we decided to go for a drive and either have a drink somewhere or do something fun. Turned out we could both at the same time! M had been harassing me about going to play pool with him for quite some time and I had always managed to worm my way out of it but, when we drove past Cue Bar in Inglewood, M finally got his way.

The Cue Bar is on the opposite side of the road from the Inglewood and there is plenty of parking out the front.We went inside and one of the first things I noticed was that it was quite busy, but that everybody seemed to be like us, couples or small groups of people just having a drink and playing pool. Yes I did say having a drink! We found out that the Cue Bar is licensed and they have $10 cocktails on Saturday nights. If only M knew about this I would have gone along so much sooner! They also have different drinks specials on during the week including $6 Coronas on Wednesdays and pool competitions on Friday nights.

You pay when you leave but you rent the table by the hour ($14 on peak. $8 off peak). M ordered a Singh beer which is from Thailand and I had a strawberry daiquiri. They then said they would bring our drinks to our table.

We started playing and to be honest, im not going to mention the scores here. It is safe to say that M kicked my butt in every game even though we were playing by our own rules. When I say our rules, I mean that for every one shot M gets, I get two, even if I didn’t pot a ball.

They were playing funky house over the speakers and it had quite a good atmosphere for a pool hall. The service was very good with a friendly waitress asking us if we wanted a new drink and they were quick to take our old ones away.

We ended up staying for 2 hours which equalled 3 games of pool and 2 strawberry daiquiris. Coincidence? Maybe!

We will definitely be coming back here again. It is a good place to go to for a drink, a chat and also play pool. The Cur Bar is at 800 Beaufort Street, Inglewood and it is also open to 1am on Saturday nights. If you wanted more information their website is http://www.cuebar.com.au/.

View Larger Map