Tomislav

It's the time of the year again for my Christmas catch up with DD. We racked our brains for dining options and chose Tomislav. It was such a last minute decision but we managed to get a booking for a Saturday dinner. I was looking forward to an interesting dining experience and based on the reviews I have read, I didn't think I would be disappointed.

Firstly I must say that it is located at a very convenient spot, literally walking distance from Kings Cross station. From where we were sitting, I could see the traffic on Darlinghurst road and I could also see snippets of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We chose an outdoor table as it was quite a humid evening, and it was lovely to sit outside and feel the breeze.

I was surprised at how much smaller in size the restaurant was than I anticipated. We had two menu options, the 4 course meal or the 8 course degustation. We opted for the 4 course meal. The next challenge was to decide which of each dish we wanted for each course. There were some interesting dishes and we wanted to be a little left centre with our choices.

Before the dishes were served, we had some beautiful bread which were presented with a Wattleseed burnt toffee butter. The butter was beautifully presented on a stone block. The bread, by the way, was from Iggy's.

Course 1:
Venison tartare with a poached yolk, mustard crumbs served with poppyseed toast.

Fried chicken wings with cauliflower cream, anchovy juice and raw cauliflower.

Verdict: The venison tartare was so smooth and creamy. It did not taste like raw meat. DD had not had steak tartare before so this was a first time for him. It was surprisingly good, but for DD a smaller serving would have sufficed. The presentation of the venison tartare was a work of art, really lovely plating.

My chicken wings were deboned, it had some interesting flavours but I felt the anchovy juice was just a tad too strong and the other flavours got lost in the midst of the the savouriness of the anchovy.

Course 2:

Roast veal sweetbread with a perfectly poached yolk, green peas and sour cherry ice.

Poached yellowfin tuna, sour potato, shavings of rainforest lime and grilled Chinese cabbage.

Verdict: This is my first attempt at having sweetbread. Who would have thought I would be brave enough to eat pancreas!!! But I did and it was really delicious. I was surprised at how tender it was, and there was such a delightful combination of flavours in that dish!!! I really liked it! So my sweetbread dish more than made up for my slightly disappointing first dish. I must also say that I really liked the plate the dish was served on, a rather retro glass plate that was eye catching.

DD's yellowfin tuna had a very clean palate. Just light and fresh. We thought it would have been better as a Course 1 dish, but that was our humble opinion. I am sure Chef Tomislav would have begged to differ!?!?

Course 3:

Braised beef short rib, with soft polenta, Yakajirri tomato and grilled King browns.

Roast lamb neck, with a serving of braised lamb belly, served with wasabi crumbs and grilled pineapple.

Verdict: Both dishes were good. I enjoyed every bit of the lamb belly and the neck. It was such an interesting combination of the wasabi crumbs with the pineapple. DD's short ribs were delicious! Interesting to have two textures of the polenta, a soft texture and a firmer texture.

Course 4:

Vanilla cheesecake with cheese jelly, green apple ice and roast apple ice cream.

Textures of caramel, with toasted walnuts, BBQ sweet corn and buttermilk ice cream.

Verdict: We shared both dishes so we were able to have a good taste of the desserts. I found the textures of caramel to be more of my taste. It was not too sweet but there was the salty, sweet and crunchy flavours and the textures all melded together. I liked the touch of the BBQ sweet corn, it added a nice twist to the dessert.

The cheesecake had a light, summery taste. The slightly tangy green apples (I think they were poached) lifted the flavours of the cheesecake.

I was however disappointed that the restaurant was not full. The food is good, the service is good and the presentation of the dishes were great. There was an interesting slant to every dish we had and I would have thought Tomislav would have a higher profile in the Sydney food world. Maybe it was the time of the year where there are Christmas parties galore. I don't know, but all I will say is this is a good restaurant and deserves more patronage than what I saw that night.

Come on Sydney, we can do better than this! :-)



Tomislav
2/13 Kirketon Road
Darlinghurst
NSW 2010
Tel: +612 9356 4535
Website: tomislav.com.au

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad