the Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel
Cuisine: French
Riverside at Crown
8 Whiteman Street
Southbank
03 9292 7808
www.thebrasserieatcrown.com.au
Alan rarely offer to take me out to dinner, so when he offered me dinner at Crown, I leapt at the chance of trying one of the restaurants there. There’s Conservatory buffet, but we’ve been there tried that. We tried to get into Number 8, but it’s got half an hour wait time at 8pm at night (note to self: Must be good so try it next time!) So we went to the Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel, a french restaurant next door.
It was quite busy in there but we managed to get a seat. Not a great seat mind you because the room is overcrowded, but we can’t expect much if we don’t book. As usual, Alan ordered 1/2 dozen oysters Freshly shucked oysters with shallot & lemon $18. Usually, when I asked Alan how his oysters were, he would grunt and nod slightly. This time, he actually said, “yeah it’s nice.”- what a rarity! The oysters must be really fresh.
I ordered a Savoury scallop tartlet, onion fondue and porcinni crust$18. I am not too sure where the onion fondue is, but layers of scallops lies on top of sweet caramelised onion which lies on layers of crunchy pastries. The crunchiness of the pastry perfectly contrasts the smoothness of the scallops… Mmmmmm yummy.
We were forewarned that our mains will take about 30-35mins to arrive, as we ordered Salt crusted rib eye baked (800gr) served with Kipfler potatoes and your choice of sauce $80.00. However it took more than 45mins to arrive. Never mind, as we are happily chatting in this relaxing environment that we hardly noticed- it was our waitress that volunteered to chase our mains up for us, which came immediately. When it arrived, I was a bit worried that we couldn’t finish it- it was so big!
But this is only the pretty presentation. The waiter then took it away to ask the chef to cut this into pieces for us. As it turned out- there are only 3 pieces each.
Too bad it was so dry and salty
I am a bit disappointed with this dish- the complexity of flavours in scallops was completely lost in this dish. I totally understand that salt crusted should mean salty, but this is WAYYYY too salty. It’s so salty that we could not even taste the flavour of the beef, and I had to use the side potatos and lots of water to diffuse the saltiness. The beef itself was quite tender, but with the sauce we’ve chosen, which is mustard, it’s on the dry side.
We are not discouraged, so we tried some dessert.Vanilla and Chocolate Gratin with ice cream $16-17 is what we’ve ordered although we didn’t know what it is, we knew we like vanilla and chocolate. According to Wikipedia, “gratin” means upper crust. I don’t really know how this relate to our dessert as it doesn’t have a crusty upper crust, but it has the yummiest, smoothest vanilla pudding like thing I’ve ever tasted, with a chocolate crust underneath. Once again, the contrast of hard and smooth makes this dish interesting. The vanilla ice cream is also made with real vanilla pod, while the dark chocolate ice cream is not too sweet- gorgeous.
See the chocolate crust on the bottom- yummie!
Tags: French, Melbourne
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on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 11:58 pm and is filed under French.
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