No 1 Bent St

I always love to find good deals around, and when I saw Dimmi offer half price dinner for a more fancier dinner place, I booked it even without looking at the menu. As a uni student who loves exploring new places, always need to be mindful of how much things cost since no money to eat at fancy places regularly. Prices below are for a la carte. The set dinner menu is $80pp. It's not cheap as the plates of food to share aren't big, but you can definitely tell the quality of the produce is top notch. I love the idea of a sharing menu, since sharing means you can try more variety. 

I love restaurants this side of town, with all these sandstone buildings.

menu

Open kitchen

bar  (didn't get any drinks cause no money lel)

love their long tables. was a bit too keen and first ones to arrive for the night

Chicken liver pate, four spiced salt-$4pp

Mike’s sourdough, cultured salted butter-$7pp

Even though there's high fat content, I still love pates. This chicken pate lacked that distinct taste and fragrance in a duck pate, but it was still delicious. It was smooth and not grainy, well seasoned and went well with the bread. The butter was more creamier and super smooth. Sourdough not too sour, but crust was a bit hard/chewy.

Blackened leek, jamon Iberico, romesco, almond-$21

I always associate blackened/charcoaled food as cancerous, so I didn't end up eating the skin of the leek. I could appreciate how the char on the leeks just made a boring leek into something with more dimension, and it was really soft as well.

Pressed tofu, cucumber, crispy chicken skin, Szechuan chilli sauce-$18

Hands down the crispiest chicken skin ever! It was wafer thin but so crisp that the table two down from us turned their heads my way when I cracked into it. Of course you need some special equipment to dehydrate (?) then somehow crispy it up. This was actually a cold entree with firm tofu, and thin cucumber slivers. I think my chilli tolerance is increasing because I just managed to have Szechuan sauce. Without the heat, the tofu is quite bland. I did have to drink a few glasses of water afterwards. It is definitely spicy for me, but a good spicy (I can't believer I just said that lol).

Ash baked eggplant, puffed rice, edamame, sesame sauce-$18

I actually hate eggplant, but this dish with their sesame sauce made me love eggplant. I didn't eat the skin because it was a bit too ashy/black for me, but I loved the puffed rice for a bit of texture and the edamame and coriander to keep the dish light. I wished I new that special recipe sauce, there was a bit of miso in it as well which made the sauce even better.

Twice cooked goats cheese soufflé with rosemary-$21

inside

Wood fired lamb rump, ratatouille & tapenade-$38

The most tenderest lamb ever. It was perfectly cooked with pink throughout. It's not cheap for 4 slices of lamb, but you can definitely tell this is super good quality and cut of lamb. The tomato-ey flavour from the ratatouille wasn't too strong either so the lamb flavour shone through. This was my favourite dish of the night. 

salad

Love the addition of fresh dill to the salad which was lightly dressed and super fresh. Going to add dill into everything now lol.

Rice pudding with sugar plum jam and honeycomb-$14

We actually waited around 20mins before I asked them where our dessert was and they said it was coming. I found it odd they have us another steak knife then later placed another lamb on our table. We told them we already had the lamb and they said were we sure. I wouldn't mind having a second plate for free, but I'm not greedy like that lol. I think they took it back out to the kitchen then back to another table. It didn't look as pink as our dish though... Then 5 minutes later they finally brought out the dessert, which had obviously been prepared beforehand.

I normally go to restaurants for their desserts, but I guess if I were to come here again, it would be for savouries rather than sweets. Personally, I thought the rice pudding was a bit boring. It was a bit thick and creamy, and probably just too heavy to end the night with. It doesn't take much skill either to make rice pudding. The plum jam was very sweet, but it went well to add sweetness, and the honeycomb had that nice slightly bitter flavour which added a good crunch. 

Would I pay full price? Probably not since it's not cheap as each dish is shared, but if I was to go again, I would go for the lamb.