Zouk @ Grand Chifley Adelaide

Address: Grand Chifley Hotel Adelaide, 208 South Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000
Tel: (08) 8223 2800

This evening meal choice was after an 8+ hour drive from Coober Pedy back to Adelaide so I was pretty buggered and had negative energy to think of a good place to eat and the fact my car was already parked meant I still had enough energy to drag myself downstairs for an evening meal (I am very anti room service, never had good room service food).

Entree (below): Chicken & Pistachio Meatballs with Char-Grilled Barossa Chorizo, Vegetables Relish & Warmed Turkish Bread. The chicken meatballs were the standout - great texture (cooked then fried) and the nutty mixture was just fantastic. The chorizo was way too salty for my liking, and the Turkish bread looked like a French bread stick sliced and passed through the commercial toaster. A very large entree/tasting plate.


Below: Char-grilled WA Scallops in whipped Wasabi butter & fried Nori. The photo probably doesn't do the dish any favours by making it look like scallops dragged through sewerage, but the wasabi/nori butter was quite savoury and interesting. Really dislike the digestive orange bits - doesn't add any flavour or texture and almost ruins the other flavours. Really should consider a better grade scallop....

Mains (below): Linguini Oceania - SA selected seadfood finished with Rose sauce & Parmesan. Another knockout dish - I'd say the mains were the chef's core strength. This rose sauce wasn't very tomatoey - instead it almost resembled a savoury bbq flavour. The seafood was cooked to perfection and I'd say the serving size was perfect - great, great flavour!


Above: Tea-Smoked Duck Breast with duck liver & pear ravioli served with blood orange & thyme sauce. That duck breast was tea-smoked to perfection - it was exactly what I had in mind - a strong, smoky flavour (almost like I was in the same room as the fire) infused throughout the meat without drying it out. Succulent duck breast meat and the blood orange & thyme sauce was just magical. The ravioli was a let down - the pasta tasted like wonton wrappings with some pate shoved between the layers. What's with SA and pate as a filling? Too heavy! The pear didn't quite work with the pate either - the texture and flavour was just wrong - perhaps it needed to be blended through the duck liver rather than cubed and thrown in loosely.

Desserts (below): Slow-baked Lemon & Lime Tart with Jerset double thick cream & Adelaide Hills berry compote.


Above: Grand Brandy Snap Basket containing FruChoc icecream and strawberries. This was my dessert and I absolutely loved it - what a great way to end my over-indulgent, calorific meal and my holiday. All roadtrip I was just craving a great icecream and that berry compote was just so fresh and berrylicious. Fruchoc is a SA local delicacy so without knowing I could tick off another SA foodie box. The flavour was kind of like the Gaytime icecream wth chocolate ripples through it - simple and delicious! I regret not eating the brandy snap basket but I just had no more appetite left...

This was easily my favourite meal during this South Australian adventure - an excellent execution of flavours and chef skills.

The "Whitehouse" Restaurant @ Presidential Inn, Mt Gambier

Address: (Quality Inn Presidential Motel) 154-156 Jubilee Hwy West, Mount Gambier, SA 5290
Tel: (08) 8724 9966

Another example of travller's laziness - but in this case it was about 8:30pm at night, I had driven through the darkness and everything either looked closed or was some horrible fast food bingo draw.

Entree (below): Chicken Putenesca - "Succulent chicken shanks wrapped in proscuitto sauced with a fresh tomato, olive, caper and white wine sauce". The putenesca sauce was flavoursome and well-prepared, but the proscuitto wrapped chicken shanks were slightly undercooked and lacklustre. If they could somehow manage to crisp the proscuitto (which is what I envisaged from the menu) it would give the dish more texture and created less of a divide between such a great sauce & the meat which seemed to go off on its own tangent.

Entree: Sesame Chicken - "Chicken medallions sauteed in honey and toasted sesame seeds, nested on an avocado skordalia, accompanied with grilled pancetta and snow pea shoots". A classy take on a classic - who would have thought honey & avocado made such a great combination?


Below: Baked Scallops - "Japanese scallops baked in shell with shallot , wine stock with fresh bread crumbs and parmesan". Japanese scallops are - in my opinion - the best variety of scallop you can get. The size, texture and fact it can be presented without the guts on the side makes it a pure & desirable dish. This rendition had a great fresh shallot flavour, not heavy at all. The soggy breadcrumbs did let me down, but it could have been worse with the parmesan overpowering the whole dish. I thoroughly enjoyed the flavours here - the chef has respected the quality of the scallops and played the flavour to highlight the produce.

Dessert (below): Chocolate Hotpot - this was like a chocolate lava cake with some ground nuts and ice cream - what a perfect way to end an evening. It was a clean, unique chocolate flavour with a harmony of textures.


Above: Beer Lime Sorbet - "tastebug tingling dessert, sorbet made with lime infused beer served with frozen berry crumble, candied fruits and mango coulis". Looks and sounds a lot better than it tastes - kudos to the chef for conjuring up a beer lime sorbet - that part didn't let me down but it was the candied fruits and combination of the other elements which spoiled this dessert. I was initially worried I'd taste more yeasty-beer flavour than the lime, but the lime accent shined through and the texture of the sorbet was even slightly bubbly - that itself was a simple way to cleanse the palate after a heavy meal. The candied fruits tasted like a couple of old chopped orange peels thrown in and mixed around (bitter) and the mango coulis was great but I was just wondering what it was doing in there. Frozen berry crumble is basically some frozen berries blasted in a blender - interesting idea for those wanting to try something different at home texture wise on their desserts, but added little value to the sorbet.

My confession is that I really enjoyed this meal. I was full & tired but persisted to go the whole 3 rounds with a dessert, because I was simply curious about the beer lime sorbet and the variety/combination of flavours presented to me on this menu.

I hate the hotel (which is really a mote) because their photos were deceptively bait-and-switch, but if I am back in Mt Gambier I will definitely come back to The Whitehouse (yes, the name is disastrously sickening) for an evening meal.