22 September 2008

Too much tucker in Canberra restaurants?

| johnboy
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The Herald Sun’s Chris Wallace has found an un-named restaurant critic to slag off Canberra restaurants in comparison with the glories of Melbourne:

    A national restaurant critic has just marked Canberra restaurants down for not quite meeting Melbourne’s pre-eminent standard. Serving size was the damning evidence.

    Every food snob knows the implicit fine dining equation: small serves signal high quality. Too much was slapped on the plate in even the best national capital restaurants, the critic said, for Canberra cuisine to be taken seriously.

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To many restaurants in Canberra and way to many serving cr@p. Yes Melbourne dining is far better than Canberra, that’s becuae the locals won’t patronise places that don’t make the grade, unlike Canberrans who think if it’s edible it’s acceptable. Not sure how you fix that though?

WTF??? Makes a Today Tonight segue look smooth as a freshly licked plate from Central Cafe.
For what its worth, in my experience size is irrelevant, quality of the produce is number one, what the chef does (or doesn’t do) with it is number two.
Many here seem to be well travelled and I’m sure that many have had amazing meals that cost F all but were prepared simply and with care.

What a knob. Where’s the culinary delight in paying $100 for a meal and going home hungry?

Pile it up I say…

Thank god that food critic didn’t visit the eateries of Queanbeyan. He’d have died in horror. They have to put the food in layers, as it won’t all fit on the plate otherwise. To get the chips you have to burrow under the schnitzel.

Loquaciousness7:27 pm 22 Sep 08

astrojax said :

if any restaurant ‘critic’ measures the quality of the establishment by the serve size, then they should f*** up and die and immediately drop such an outlandish sobriquet.

Hear! Hear!

L

Melbourne dining is … lightyears away from Canberra

actually, ‘s only about 650kms… ; )

if any restaurant ‘critic’ measures the quality of the establishment by the serve size, then they should f*** up and die and immediately drop such an outlandish sobriquet.

there are plenty of restuarants around canebrra where u can go to get a plate piled up with food, and there are plenty that give way smaller portions.
it just depends what u feel like….

i myself prefer the piled up option… Some for now, take some home for later 🙂

I think portion sizes here in Canberra are spot-on, as are price and quality, on the whole. We’ve discussed this before, that because Canberra has a relatively small population the bad restaurants tend to get squeezed out pretty quick.

We did however eat at an expensive, well known, award winning Italian restaurant in Civic some weeks back and the mains, though delicious, were so small some of us headed straight for Ali Baba afterwards. I can assure you the bill for 6 people was far from entree sized.

There’s nothing I hate more than those ridiculously small serving sizes you get at self styled ‘fancy’ restaurants.

‘oh look, there’s a steak under those two pieces of brussel sprout that I just ate.’

My 2c is it all depends on how you’re ordering.

If you’re having bread, entree, main, side dishes, desert, chocolate with coffee, along with beer for starters, wine with the meal, and licquer with the coffee, then I know I don’t have room for huge portions anywhere along the way.

If I’m just having one plate on the other hand, it had better be full to the edges.

tylersmayhem3:31 pm 22 Sep 08

@Loquaciousness: I agree 100%!

Loquaciousness2:55 pm 22 Sep 08

I’ve said it before on RA, and I’ll say it again – I’m a big fan of tasty, quality, well-prepared food. The Melbournites can keep their stack-and-drizzle little things any day. I want to eat it not take a photo of it.

L

Primal, for some people the primary role of a restaurant is to provide an experience that they enjoy. For such people, spending $300 on a small-but-perfectly-formed restaurant meal is no different to others spending a similar amount on, say, Formula 1 tickets, or a night at the theatre. It’s about the experience rather than the calories – if you’re going to a fine dining restaurant purely for the nutrients, then I dare say you’re missing the point.

The primary role of a restaurant is to fill my stomach. When you do not understand this, you should stop trying to be a restaurant critic.

> Canberra dining is utter, utter rubbish

I’m guessing you’re eating in the wrong places. I’ve had better meals here than anywhere. I’m more of the opinion that individual restaurants are different, rather than “Melbourne good, Sydney bad” generalisations. Would a great chef from Melbourne who moved to Canberra suddenly start cooking crap food?

If that was the worst thing he could complain about then that is a real credit to our local restaurants. Take it as a compliment ! He clearly had to find something negative to appease the Melbourne readers.

Canberra dining is utter, utter rubbish. That we put up with such substandard food, drinks and service is beyond me.

Melbourne dining is miles ahead of Sydney, and lightyears away from Canberra.

Stop putting up with rubbish, fellow Canberrans!

gun street girl10:42 am 22 Sep 08

Similarly, everybody knows that real journalists don’t write for the Herald Sun. What next – an expose of Canberra restaurants on Today Tonight?

C’mon people, everybody knows that a true celebrity would never deign to eat more than one artistically placed lettuce leaf ….

When it comes to food, Canberra just can’t cut the mustard.

Wankers. If you’re going to judge food quality based on inverse serving size, I would submit that you’ve missed the point. That’s like judging wine by its price (in which case I’ve got some extremely expensive wine to sell you at a generous discount). How about judging it by…say…it’s taste and presentation? Or is that getting too complex? Is all that’s required to be a food critic these days a set of scales and a ruler?

What a ‘tard!

I thought Chris Wallace was a free lancer matey?

maybe the critic should remove their stomach staple???

Holden Caulfield10:13 am 22 Sep 08

“Every food snob knows the implicit fine dining equation: small serves signal high quality. Too much was slapped on the plate in even the best national capital restaurants…”

…except in the Parliamentary dining room. 😉

Huh? Are servings were too generous?

I’d submit a slightly edited version…

“Every normal person knows the implicit fine dining equation: people who actually expect small serves & think that a generous serve is bad are suffering high wankery.”

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