After a massive lunch at Secret Garden with my friend Ami, I had a drink after work with an old colleague Aimee at The George and then headed out to Andaluz Bar & Tapas for dinner with another Amy. And the funny thing is that it all just panned out that way and I had not at planned to have a ‘Amy’ day!
Anyway, I thought it was time to try the much talked about Andaluz Bar & Tapas …I did call to see if I could make a booking but they said they didn’t take reservations so we went on a limb and just hoped it wouldn’t be completely packed on a Wednesday night.
Andaluz is tucked away on Howard Street opposite the St George side of Enex 100 and I felt like I was walking into a Melbourne laneway bar minus the stairs (kudos to the City Laneways Project).
Having not been to Andaluz before we weren’t sure what the protocols were, questions my friend and I were asking each other were:
- Do we order at the bar or is it table service?
- Can we just sit down?
- Where do we seek service, is it at the bar or is there a restaurant area?
To the regular Andaluz patrons we probably looked like tourists! When we managed to catch a waitress, we made out from our brief encounter that there were no reservations tonight and something about a 3 seater being available so we took that as ‘take a seat’. The waitress was on the run and didn’t stop to clarify so we did take a few minutes to confirm what we thought she had meant and took a seat inside. 5 or so minutes later we were given menus so that confirmed that it was table service.
This is what we had, in order of what I enjoyed most to what I couldn’t/didn’t eat:
Croquettes Manchego cheese & artichoke croquettes, parsley & caper verde ($13)
These were like arancini balls but filled with Manchego cheese instead of rice - yum! If you love cheese, you’ll enjoy this!
Strawberry Cheesecake with Berries $16
This was delicious and not at all what I had expected! I thought it would be just a traditional slice of strawberry cheese cake but what we were served was completely creative and looked amazing.
The cheese had a cream like texture, the ‘biscuit base’ was soft yet had a slight crunch to it and all on the one spoon it just tasted out of this world. You’ll know what I mean by the photo!
Seared scallops, Berkshire pork cheek confit, Alvear PX soaked raisins $13
The combination of the pork and scallops worked really well, sauce was yum too.
New Norcia bread, olive oil and balsamic ($9)
This was a good filler, the bread was nice and there was something about the balsamic that made it extra tasty!
Mixed grain salad, roasted baby beets, walnuts & labna ($10)
Our waitress had recommended the mixed grain salad as a light salad to compliment our more heavier / fattier tapas…it was nice but I wouldn’t consider it light as I thought it was actually a good filler. The salad was tasty but there was just way too much spring onion!
Fried White Baits $12
For those of you who have been following my food blog, you’ll know that I have a major phobia with eating any type of meats that I can visually picture the animal i.e. I find it hard to eat whole fish; can’t eat prawns with their heads intact (I actually never use to eat prawns at all until I met burger boy but *proud smile* I can now eat it with the tail intact); can’t look or eat a pig on the spit…. weird I know but it’s just one of those things…
So when we ordered the white bait, I had not taken it literally! I thought it would be filleted fish…rather than whole baits with eyes and all - I really did try my very hardest to eat it, I even tried cutting the head off with my knife and eating just the tail but I just couldn’t digest it! Oh well, lesson learned for next time - baits are not for me!
My friend Amy however did try her best to get through as many as possible but she did say the white baits tasted too fishy and salty for her liking (from the two seconds I had the white bait in my mouth I thought the same…).
Overall, I enjoyed the ambience and atmosphere at Andaluz Bar & Tapas but I think it is more a bar you would go for a few drinks with tapas on the side rather than specifically for dinner as we did. The service was ok but it did throw us off at the beginning of the night.
Follow my food journey…
