Paladarr

11th November 2011

Number 53 on the list is now complete with dinner at Paladarr with Clare. A Thai restaurant located in Alphington on a residential street and opposite an industrial shed was an unassuming place for a hat restaurant.

A decent wine list and a reasonably small but diverse menu broken down into various sections including a monthly special dish. I went with a beer and Clare went with a great frangelico and pear cocktail.

We started with an appetiser called Miang Karm a self serve mix of chapoo leaf filled with dried shrimp, diced ginger, chili, toasted coconut, lime and a palm sugar topping sauce. Good flavours but the leaf was slightly too thick for me but the flavours worked well together and the palm sugar sauce was good.

I then went for a starter of deep fried ribbons of kangaroo fillet marinated in an oyster, fish and soy sauces with a little fresh salad and toasted macadamias. The kangaroo was rich and had good flavour but was slightly overcooked and slightly chewy. The macadamias worked well the kangaroo.

For main Clare and I shared one curry and one stir fry - the stir fry being a blue eye fillet, plump prawns, pear and mango in a red curry sauce. The blue eye fish and plump prawns were cooked perfectly and the sauce and red curry flavours were good. The curry was beef and peanut mussaman curry with fall apart beef and great flavours. Combined with some black sticky rice, rich butter fried roti, it was a good combinations of flavours.

Even though the portion sizes seemed small we were both reasonably full when we finished but decided that the coconut cream panna cotta infused with kaffir lime and lemon grass. Complemented with a tamarind sorbet, it was a great dish.

Good dishes, good service (although near the end when we wanted to pay the bill they seemed to disappear) and a good night out but it lacked some wow factor and something that elevated it to the next level. This will probably be in the bottom third of the restaurants visited.