Eastside Kitchen and Bar | Chippendale
Eastside Kitchen and Bar is located centrally on the trendy Kensington street, next to Central station. Whether it is a romantic dinner to celebrate a special occasion with a special person, or even an intimate social catch up then we would suggest reserving a table at Eastside Kitchen and Bar. Relying solely on the white rock Binchotan grill, only the freshest ingredients are used from locally sourced distributors.
The above picture is not a vegetable medley, but a selection of roasted baby carrots on a bed of home made green pea hummus and hickory smoked almonds for added texture. This dish was presented so beautifully and we've never seen anything like this before - so much that we felt the urge to resist ruining the presentation.
The next small dish to arrive was the grilled river baby octopus. The octopus was crunchy and had little flavour but when you slide the octopus through the black pepper sauce and include a slice of the spiced pineapple, oh it was heaven. I called dibs on seconds. This was a small but a very special dish!
Potato Gnocchi doesn't usually look this good, but wow it looked like act in a concert with spotlights shining at it left, right and centre. This dish gave the dining experience substance, flavour, eye-bobbling moment for Christie at least. Gnocchi that is so soft, no bouncy texture but tasted incredible with it the cheese sauce. Every piece placed in my mouth was like a melting moment ahhhh. Flavoured with the liquid pecorino pearls, pumpkin and of course, you can;t have gnocchi without sage.
Chargrilled Ranger's Valley Angus Hanger Steak
The steak whilst requested medium, came out medium rare (which was what the lovely waitress recommended) and boy, it was fantastic! We had no idea which cut of the beef this piece was from but the meat literally just melted away in your mouth. It caused us to do some research when we got home and found out that Hanger Steak is stripped from a muscled that doesn't do much work, meaning it is very tender and tender it was.. it was almost like a hot knife gliding through butter when the steak was cut! Needless to say, the steak was a clear winner.
Oh gosh, we haven’t even begun talking about the dessert. Okay, so we were contemplating on ordering the $44 fire and ice dessert presentation. We knew what to expect from Instagram photos. However, at the very last minute we decided not to get it (because we had no stomach space) and instead, made room for the two desserts. The panacotta was a mess - literally it was a deconstructed pannacotta that had several different tasting elements. While not traditional, where the sole and main focus is the pannacotta (the creamy gelatin mould), however when the pannacotta arrived at the our table, we were both surprised. We both have each other the one lifted eyebrow expression hahaha. We couldn’t wait to dig in! I can’t believe I ate pannacotta with a fork. The texture of the pannacotta was quite gelatinous, the almond biscuit crumbs were perfect (not too crumbly and not overly oily). When you mix the blood orange together with everything, it was absolutely divine.
Ricotta Coffee Mousse
The ricotta coffee mousse was a very interesting dessert. Drops of cappuccino flavoured mousse and drops of flavourless mousse with very strong hits of chocolate when you sporadically. The coffee mousse was spouting the beautiful aroma of coffee and tasted like you were eating an espresso shot.. but... the plate as a whole generally didn't really work for us as there were too many conflicting flavours that really demanded to be eaten on their own.
Snapshots of Food was invited to dine at Eastside Kitchen and Bar by Sweaty Betty PR