On your marks, get set – EAT!

Two words you really want to hear from a friend who has told you that they will be paying for dinner when you crack open the menus at a fancy restaurant: “Go crazy.”

So, the Ruminator was down for the weekend and we indulged.

Oh, how we ate.

My going-away present was Friday-night dinner at Ondine, downstairs at the corner of LaTrobe and Queen Streets, a stone’s throw from work. Thank you for the recommendations people, it was simply astonishing.

We had the three tastes of salmon and mosaic of duck and fois gras (sp?) for entrées, the ocean trout and saddle of rabbit for mains, and the truffle-centred soufflé with peppermint scented caramel ice cream and the “chocolate and coffee” (another three-tastes dish) for dessert. I’m not sure how food can be both rich and delicate at the same time, but it was. By the end of the entrées, the Ruminator wanted to have Donovan’s (the chef’s) baby, and by the end of the mains I was prepared to have a go at it myself.

Any lingering doubts about my limited sense of smell making my tastebuds defective have been abolished. The Riesling by the glass was also wonderfully fragrant. (A bit of a theme of the weekend was how little we wound up drinking – just too full of food, I guess.)

The service was discreet but unpretentious, the lighting subtle – but still enough to see by, and the music was all Ella and Louis tunes from my collection. The post-communist kinky-sex themed canvas hanging in the landing/foyer near the toilets was an odd touch, but the use of space in the restaurant was interesting. (We also saw someone who might have been Geoffrey Rush, but probably wasn’t.)

The rest of the weekend was pretty nifty too – but had a lot to live up to from that as a starting point. However, as I was late to the office this morning, the rest of the weekend roundup will have to wait for tomorrow.