Friday Night Food Review

OK, new segment. as well as my random and rather pointless reviews of films, I'm also going to review restaurants I visit. First review... SOS @ Melbourne Central. We had dinner there on Friday night.

SOS is quite a unique venue, situated in a rather hidden corner of Melbourne Central on the food/bar/movie level. The entrance is hidden behind an automated sliding door; behind the door is a long dimly lit corridor, complete with a Japanese style rock garden/fake tree trunks as decoration. Exiting the corridor reveals the restaurant itself, complete with large central bar, long "communal" style tables, similar to Longrain, and a spacious balcony. After entering via the shopping centre, the views across Swanston St to the State Library are refreshingly unexpected. I would put the restaurant vista up with Verge and Taxi for impressive dining views.

Anyway, so what is a fine dining restaurant doing in the middle of a shopping centre? Quite incongruous...

I read somewhere that SOS is a "veg-aquarian" restaurant. Which basically means seafood and vegetarian dishes only, no meat or chicken. Still makes for a pretty tempting menu to choose from. My selections were; for entree, carpaccio and tartare of salmon with a black olive sauce and citrus fruits; for main course, ravioli filled with porcini and thyme, with butter and blueberries; for dessert, macaroon and white chocolate terrine with grapefruit sorbet and citrus salad.

Very very tasty, although I have to admit my selections were not so adventurous. I'm always a sucker for nice salmon, and the ravioli sounded so simple and tasty. I was maybe slightly underwhelmed by the entree; the salmon was lovely, but there perhaps wasn't enough overall flavour to the dish. The main course was great; 5 large ravioli pieces, with a delicious filling, and a rice buttery sauce. The blueberries were a strange but welcome addition. The dessert was fantastic, an explosion of sweet, sour and rich flavours; the white chocolate in the terrine was sweet, the delicate grapefruit sorbet had a great sour kick, and what I presume were alcohol soaked cherries buried in the terrine added the richness.

All in all, awesome company, great meal. Highly recommended, even if it is in a shopping centre. I can definitely see myself out on the balcony having a leisurely meal over spring or summer.

Slow to react

So I've been a bit quiet on the blogging front. Don't quite know why... some busy/dull days at work, some gloomy weather and not a whole lot of excitement I guess.

But I'll have some updates soon. Topics to include...
...Friday Night Film Review - "Clerks 2"
...dinner at SOS in Melbourne Central
...the return to form of Audioslave on their new cd
...when good stuff goes bad (in particular, authors and bands)

Sleep now.