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2013-07-06
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This was a place referred by my best friend and it's been my first time visit. I am always a big fan of Italian Cuisine and frequent majority of the top ranking Italian restaurants in town. Honestly, I enjoy food more than the ambience in the restaurant and the food must be reasonably priced as well.Gold by Harlan Goldstein is a busy place with full house booking even on a weekday. It's not heavily decorated in an ornate way to win the customers then it's not too nosy nor dim that I can have
Gold by Harlan Goldstein is a busy place with full house booking even on a weekday. It's not heavily decorated in an ornate way to win the customers then it's not too nosy nor dim that I can have a chat with my friend.
We glanced through the menu and the daily specials, we finally decided to go for the tasting menu which we believe it's "value for money" (yeah, somehow I felt awkward to use this phrase since the tasting menu isn't cheap but then it's value for money in the sense that the prices of the dishes will be tripled if we go for a la carte). What's more, I went for the wine pairing option too as the increment was only couple hundred dollars which is definitely affordbale!
The house bread loaf was very good and we could only finish half of the portion. I struggled for 2 secs to pack them home...of course I didn't have the gut to do so at the end. Yet, I would finish them for sure were it not I ordered the tasting menu.
The Hokkaido king crab salad was amazingly refreshing, it matched perfectly with the glass of sparkling wine. I really like the granny smith apple ponzu dressing which was light and fruity yet not too sweet.
It took me some time to figure out the ingredients of this appetizer. Honestly, I am not into deep fried food especially deep fried veggie - too fattening with all the absorbed into the vegetable (Japanese tempura may be an exception); the deep fried zucchini tasted okay, not impressive though. Yet I have to compliment the slow cooked Sicilian octopus, they were so tender & juicy that I couldn't even tell they were octopus!
The handcrafted tagliolini pasta was the Chef special, it costs $480 (something like that) in the a la carte menu. The reason behind is very simple...they added the black truffle then the price went up like crazy. We were told that the origin of these black truffle was from Tasminia, something new to me since I have never tried any AUS truffle before. To my disappointment, the black truffle didn't give out the unique smell, just very ordinary after all. The handcrafted pasta was very nicely prepared yet the Italian melting egg made the whole dish too soggy. In an exaggerating saying, I felt like having a bowl of casserole more than a pasta dish.
We were 95% full when the main course was brought to us, thank God, I ordered the sea bass instead of the lamb rack. It's always risky to order fish in western cuisine, the probability to get a crapy one is 70/30. From my past experience, the fish would either be too chewy, tasteless or over-cooked. I am not sure if this relate to the limited choice of fish for western cuisine...anyhow, I tried my luck again to order the sea bass then surprisingly, they were really delectable. The sliced sausages on the side was good as well but I was just too full to finish everything
I just took a shot of my friend's order of the lamb rack, I heard that it's tasty...I guess it's not easy to ruin a simple dish of a lamb rack, am I correct?
I didn't take photos of the dessert but I will say the dessert was very simple but creative. In conclusion, the whole experience was not bad and this is a restaurant worth trying
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