Ambience over food

"I don't go to restaurants, I go to tables." Langdon Winner

It was that time of year when the females of the extended family get together in the city somewhere for what is theoretically to celebrate my birthday. The restaurant chosen was the Cellar Bar at the Grossi establishment of three restaurants in the city. Upstairs it's all very grand, very delicious, and very expensive. Behind the three of us in the picture is The Grill - in which we have dined very happily in the past - the mid range offering - also delicious and very Italian. Well it's all very Italian.

This year at the suggestion of my niece, we tried the low end restaurant the Cellar Bar - which, of course, being Guy Grossi owned is not really low end. Alas my niece had to withdraw at the last moment due to illness.

This is the menu, deliberately low key, and in old typewriter font. The offerings listed there are also all pretty traditional and, dare I say, unadventurous.

Now to be fair, none of us chose anything from the Piatti part of the menu. Perhaps we should have done, although even they were somewhat unexciting.

Note also the prices, and I know everything is expensive these days, but nothing is what you would call cheap. As for the drinks - $35.00 for a kir royale! Fortunately it does not really matter to us, but, it's expensive for what is sort of touted as a low end restaurant, and just to reinforce this, I just checked the menu of The Grill which is only very marginally more expensive, in fact the pasta is about the same and the shellfish offering of prawns and zucchini is cheaper. And the selection is rather more interesting.

So what did we eat? First the antipasti.

A bowl of Mount Zero olives - yes they were marinaded and Mount Zero are definitely gourmet - and there were two or three different typse and plenty of them - but anyone can do this. In fact we did not eat them all. Not much work involved from the kitchen staff however. Peperoni - on the menu it said roasted peppers, tuna and olive oil - but you know I think those white blobs were mozzarella not tuna - also not a lot of work involved here.

The Crocchette di bacala however were delicious, and would indeed have required more work in the kitchen, not to mention an ingredient that is hard to find for we ordinary people. As my daughter-in-law commented, one goes out to eat to try food one can't easily cook at home.

The faintly critical comments I am making now, I would probably not have made at the time. After all you can't go wrong with olives and roast peppers really can you?

The mains. The younger two ladies both opted for the Spaghetti al vonghole - also not that easily cooked at home. Well not by me. Probably they are pretty easy to cook. However, my daughter-in-law later said she felt the spaghetti was overcooked.

I opted for the gnocchi with tomato, mozzarella, basil. Also a disappointment. I felt the tomato component, just tasted like passata straight from the bottle, which is probably not the case, but nevertheless that's what it felt like, and the gnocchi were perhaps not as light as they should have been from an establishment such as a Grossi restaurant.

D.essert

We shared two - a flourless chocolate cake - which I cannot fault - probably, with the Crocchette di bacala the star of the show and a crostata which featured spiced fruit. Well the spiced fruit was a very minor part of the whole thing, and I have to say that it tasted much better than it looked, but then it's hard to make beige food look good isn't it?

Because the dolci were not on the photographed menu I went to the web, where I found that not only was the menu slightly different, and slightly more interesting, but many items were almost $10.00 cheaper than now. Obviously they haven't changed their sample menu for a while - which is (a) inefficient and (b) misleading. So maybe the same is true for The Grill menu, making my comparison between the two venues redundant.

All of which sounds very disappointing, and very critical. And yet - we had a good time.

Why? Well for all three of us, even the Northcote dweller, it was an excursion into the buzzy world of the city, which meant a train journey for two of us - if you are not going to work in the rush hour this can be fairly relaxing as one looks out at the world outside, and does a bit of people watching. This was a young girl at Eltham station - I just liked the blue of the train, and the pink of the bottle and bag, and the smile on her face. On the way home there was a most beautiful young girl of African origin whom I would have loved to photograph but as she was more or less facing me that would have been very intrusive and rude.

After the train ride there is the walk through the city which always presents opportunities for photographs and musings on the world - the long queue at Lune as I passed by being one. It's a bit akin to the long queues outside our local artisan baker and patissier. Is the queue there because of all the hype, or does the shop really deserve it? Lune, if you don't know is a cult croissant shop.

Alas this time I took the wrong route, although I did note that Federation Square now has deck chairs scattered here and there, but mostly I just passed fairly boring shops, and took just one photograph of these rather stunning reflections in one of our citiy's many skyscrapers.

Whatever I might say about the food - and we may just have struck a bad day for the kitchen - the venue is pleasing - at the top of Bourke Street just down from Parliament and in a small Italian enclave. The Grill and The Cellar Bar are next door to each other, and on our visit the mezzanine part above The Grill was being used by The Cellar Bar, and our table was just above The Grill and so we were able to observe the 'posher' tables below. An admirable place to observe - was that a film star over there on the far right? He looked a bit like Matt Damon when you couldn't see his face. Of course not, but it did provide us with much amusement and surreptitious glances for a while. As did the rather splendidly dressed man just behind us. I couldn't resist taking a photo of him.

So amusement provided by people watching, and of course a wonderful chance to catch up with each other without the men dominating, as they can't help but do. Different conversations too - more people and home life oriented than politics and the woes of the world. And it was here that we missed my niece, whom none of us have seen for a while.

Yes ambience is all important and I think I once read of a chef commenting that ambience trumps food. Which is not to say that food is not important. Both my daughter-in-law and I - I don't know about my almost daughter-in-law - were mildly disappointed with the food and agreed that we will not go there again. Well there are lots of other wonderful places to try. But we also agreed that we had a good time.

So here's to lunch in the city. If all doesn't go to plan or doesn't score highly in all categories there are always compensations, not the least of which is a mild sense of adventure. We all need that in our lives.

POSTSCRIPT

July 29

2023 - Chinese-American - kung pao

2022 - World lasagne day - yes it is - so if you don't know what to have for dinner - do lasagne

2021 - Your onion bhaji is really a pakora

2020 - The garlic press controversy

2019 - The vegetarian thing

2018 - Holiday tummy troubles

2017 - Nothing on this day - I wonder what I was doing?

2016 - Food and religion