It has been a while since I've written anything on this blog and due to being quite lazy, I haven't exactly baked a lot either. That however hasn't stopped me from eating a lot so I thought I would try something different and review the things I eat as well as posting recipes!
Last week was my 3 and a half year anniversary with my partner and he took me to the new-ish Sichuan restaurant in the Burbury Hotel in Barton (nothing to do with the Burberry brand). This restaurant is a part of the Chairman Group who own several upper market restaurants in Canberra. You'll have to excuse the bad quality of the photos since all I had was my iPhone!
The interior of the restaurant was quite nice, donning the usual dimly lit ambience that upper market restaurants hold. It had a bit of a modern twist and for a while we almost felt that we were dining in Sydney. Unfortunately didn't get a photo!
Once we were seated we were told of two options, either the 5 course ($66.50) or 7 course ($88) degustation meals. Malamay do not have a al la carte menu and only the set two menus. I was a little disappointed to be told that the amount of food for the 5 and 7 course were exactly the same, the only difference was that you could sample more dishes. I don't particularly understand this concept as:
a) you are paying more for the 7 course meal so one would assume that you would get a little more (this may just be my notorious food greed taking over).
b) even if you like a particular dish, you can't order it again anyways since they only do the set menus.
So first course was scallops with tempura enoki mushrooms with mixed herbs.
The scallops were well seared and were quite juicy on the inside with a black bean paste on top. The enoki tempura was well seasoned and the slight saltiness went well with the seared scallops. However, as enoki mushrooms are quite light and thin, I couldn't particularly taste any mushroom flavour as it was overpowered by the batter. But in all fairness, the batter was still quite nice.
The second dish was three chilli relish prawns with hand made noodles.
This was a cold noodle dish with the just cooked topping of prawns. It was quite delicious and I wish that I could have had a whole bowl. It was probably my favourite out of the seven dishes that we were served. The prawns were not as firm and succulent as I would have liked but nonetheless the dish as a whole was very nice and had a slight bite to it.
Third was white fish with burnt green chilli and black bean raddish crumbs
This was quite a winter comfort dish and the combination of the salty raddish crumbs and warm broth and fish was well balanced. Fish was also cooked perfectly!
Fourth was a smoked spatchcock with salted fish fennel and apple salad.
The salad of this dish was very tasty and the apple and fennel worked well together with the gamey spatchcock. The salted fish paste you can see in the middle of the plate tasted almost identical to the crumble on top of the fish in dish three.
Fifth was a wagyu beef cake with chilli fermented vegetable filling.
This tasted almost like a big fried dumpling with pickled ginger and a blood orange jelly at the top which melted into a sauce. I wasn't the biggest fan of this dish and felt that the blood orange jelly/sauce was a little bitter for my tasting. However the casing of the meat was nice and crisp.
Sixth was a sous vide beef cheek with yellow wine and goji berries.
This dish came out served with rice and was the main dish of the whole course. The beef cheek was very tender and the broth went well with the rice.
Seventh was a chilli chocolate charcoal with yoghurt cream, pistachio and mandarin crumb.
This desert didn't quite do it for me. The chocolate charcoal was good but the amount of hotness was somewhat overbearing. The chilli slightly burnt the throat.
All in all the meal was pleasant and the wait staff were very nice and went into detail about each dish which was good. I feel that I enjoyed the dishes at the time but by the end I didnt feel completely satisfied and felt as though something was missing.
That is just my two cents. Did anyone else try the restaurant?
What did you guys think?
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