Giuseppe Arnaldo & Sons

30th November 2011

Unfortunately this restaurant has the misfortune of being my least favoured so far, despite a warm wrap from a work colleague. Despite being a great night out with my father and brother it was due to the many laughs rather than the exquisite cooking. Busy even on a Tuesday night, we were lucky to receive a table due to its prominent location in crown casino and a no booking policy. (A most infuriating trend with some classier restaurants). The first thing you notice about the restaurant is the dark and often disjointed decor in the place.

We were shown to our seats and our waitress, who seemed eager to help, seemed apologetic about the confusing menu. Broken in different sections based on food type rather than sequential order it made for a long and difficult decision on the format of the meal and the dishes to be ordered. Probably designed to create options for the dinner, it provided too many options and i believe in the creation of menus that a less is more approach is preferable.

After a long deliberation we decided to go a shared first course of Gorgonzola, Pancetta and Polpelette. Whilst the Gorgonzola and pancetta lived up to our expectations they were the result of an ability to source good produce rather than quality cooking. The Polpelette was decent with good flavour and texture but failed to deliver any wow factor or a belief that this wasn't something that could be created at home.

On to main course and the selection of three very different main courses and one of the most inexplicable yet humorous decisions. My choice involved the same work colleague's recommendation and i went for the Berkshire sausages with pickled capsicum. I found the sausages to be bland and tasteless and the combo with the pickled capsicum was not to my tastes. Normally one to finish everything on my plate and potentially others, i found myself not wanting to finish the albeit generous portion.

My father's choice - the Rib Eye (roughly Sliced) with Rocket, Green Peppercorns, Chilli and Spring Onions was a decent cut of meat and well cooked but nothing exciting or particular extraordinary.

On to my brother's choice. Having read the menu the usually more conservative in his choice of food somehow decided on the offal section and in particular the Pig's trotter. We explained to him that it would actually be a pig's foot but to no avail. He had decided on it and was sticking to his choice and decided to try something new. His stubborn refusal to change made the look of horror on his face all the more sweeter as a large pig trotter and nothing else was set in front of him.
Despite his reservations about eating a whole foot, the meat inside was the best part of the meal if you could get over the fact that you were eating meat out of a pig's foot - which my brother could not.

For desert, being a Chocoholic, i could not go past the first item on the desert menu - the baked chocolate pot with chocolate pearls. The chocolate pot was almost mousse like and the chocolate pearls were nice and a playful addition. It was a decent way to finish the dinner but nothing that would have me recommending it or heading back for more.

Overall a disappointing adventure with some sometimes bland, uninspiring cooking and a confusing set up. In my opinion the restaurant was unworthy of the 1 hat bestowed upon it and a lesser option to a non hatted restaurant (Bottega) that i visited the next day.