Gastro Park
5-9 Roslyn St,
Kings Cross
B and I have our birthdays in June, so in the weekend in between our birthdays, we decided to give Gastro Park. From what I've read, its a new restaurant opened by the ex-chef of Pier, but with a modern twist. Must be quite a twist given its very "creative" name.
And with that, not sure what is happening with Pier Restaurant in Rose Bay. Since, I just bought a voucher recently for $50 off. A once 3-hatted restaurant surely doesn't need advertising from Cudo or JumpOnIt for help.
But back to Gastro Park. The food was amazing, the entrees, mains and desserts were all good. My only complaints, you should see the size of the "salad". 3 leaves of greens does not constitute to be a salad and for it to cost $15!
And, the service. It was not a particularly busy night, it was a Saturday, but still. The service was Ohhhhh SOOOOOOO slow. We were getting tired and frustrated from the wait. We actually wanted to cancel the desserts, but were told that the dishes were "coming soon". Where after the 2nd complaint, the dishes did come straight away. But, if that improved, then it would have been an otherwise fault-less meal!
I'm a little disappointed the menu isn't online. Because of that, I'm going to have to try and recall what all the dishes were. Bad memory.. sorry, I'll try my best!
Sonoma Bread rolls
Crab Consomme
The consomme smelt so rich and flavoursome.
Seared Scallops
Scallops were seared perfectly. Nice, juicy and plump
Parmesan "salad"
I saw another table order this, was intrigued so tried it out. Essentially its just parmesan cheese melted in a funny shape, with a few random "salad" like flavours.
Dish of the night: Crispy scaled snapper with smoked potato puree, calamari crackling and ink sauce.
The snapper was beautiful. Light and soft meat. I've never eaten scales before, but it was definitely a nice touch to add them back onto the fish.
Confit of Blue Eye Cod.
According to B, the cod was nice, but nothing spectacular. (she should have chosen the snapper)
Yes.. they bought their carebear into GastroPark. I feel embarrassed for myself looking at this photo.
Dessert of the day: Chocolate honeycomb sphere.
OMG, this was absolutely amazing. When you break of then the sphere, honeycomb is running out, and taste absolutely divine. A and I gobbled this up in 2 minutes. Was very disappointed when there was none left, especially we waited an unbelievable long time for this dessert to arrive,
Nitro Pavlova
Yes, its nitro. But, nope, didn't do it for me. It wasn't that great. Maybe it was because I went through a meringue/pavlova phase, where I made a different version every weekend for a month. But, it was a good meringue, that was very cold.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to take a picture of the octopus "salad", aka, 2 octopus legs with 3 green leaves.
Even with the slow service, I would come back again to try the other dishes. They were worth the wait.
My Rating: 7.5/10
The entrees, mains and desserts all had their stand out dishes, so definitely worth a trip back.
xoxo.. Mich
