Waterline Cafe, Bar & Restaurant

With friends back from there European holiday; it was great to catch up again. After having coffee and biscuits followed later by smoked salmon, crackers, brie and olives, we were ready for dinner.
The Waterline cafe, bar, restaurant was to become our destination.
It was a Monday night and we had booked for 7 pm. We arrived a little early but that was not a problem as there were plenty of tables free. Harry was our waiter, a very pleasant English lad, over with the hopes of securing his place in Brisbane to study.

We chose our table right near the door so as to see what was going on. It was still cold and we were glad to have our jackets on. The heaters were
inside so of no use what so ever. I guess some are more tolerant to the cold than others. The menus and wine/drinks list were on the tables along with wine glasses and our cutlery with blue paper napkins. It all looked very pleasing to the eye.
Sometimes I wish that I had a little fat under my behind as the chairs are not all that comfy, maybe cushions would help that, just a suggestion.

We chose our wine and studied the menu a little longer before ordering a few Tapas followed by our main meals. Our wine came and the host was given a sip to try, we had a discussion then about wether you really need to offer the wine to try if the bottle has no cork just a screw top, as many bottles do these days. You always checked to taste if the wine was˜corked obviously from the cellaring with the cork as the stopper. I would be interested to find out about the idea now behind the tasting of these wines today.

Harry took our order and we had our Tapas within 15 minutes. House made sun dried tomato & olive foccacia with trio of dips $12,
the bread needed salt, the dips were fine and lifted the bread

The panko crumbed beef skewers with Chinese bbq sauce $12 was very tasty. Four neat tidy skewers and a great tasting sauce was a good match.
As for the wok tossed chilli salt squid with yuzu dipping sauce $15, well that squid never touched a wok, especially as it was lightly crumbed to, it would have been very strange to wok toss something crumbed!!

Shame for the squid which was nicely scored and cut to size. The overall presentation of the tapas was very good on the nice fine square plates. As for our main meals, we had two catch of the day $31 the fish was very nicely cooked and it ate well with the soba noodles scallops and Asian inspired sauce.

The port glazed chicken breast wrapped in pancetta with wild mushroom risotto, seasoned winter vegetables and port tarragon sauce $29. The breast of chicken was huge. And was cooked to perfection nice and moist with no trace of fierce heat on the pancetta. As for the risotto, I felt that it was rather sweet, I couldn’t make out if this had come from the use of port wine or something else. It was also a little stodgy. The winter vegetables were fine. The dish came topped with sweet potato shards. Unfortunately the plates are too small to give its presentation justice as it was all to cramped. Tarragon was none existent in flavour.

Onto the braised lamb shank in a chorizo and roma tomato ragout topped with garlic mash, puffed pastry and a minted lamb jus $27. I did not get to taste this, but from the comments that I had it was tasty but full of mash. I’m not so sure about the combination but I will have to try before passing judgement.

Onto desert, the ladies choose frangelico and vanilla bean pannacotta with cointreau sauce $9. This would also have been my choice apart from the three cheese platter which had my favourites but I was just too full for more. Disappointed I was though to see that the pannacotta was set in a chocolate cup. As the other dessert was a chocolate cup with chef’s selection of handmade sorbets.
We finished with lavazza coffees which were very good. Total bill was $ 204.90.
Overall a good night at the Waterline. John Mundell will return