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One of Canberra’s new foreshore restaurants

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Kingston is a lovely suburb in Canberra and its foreshore in the 1920’s was the industrial heart of Canberra.  It is now home to many apartments and cafes, pubs and restaurants.  A nice place to go for breakfast, lunch or dinner and has a nice view across the river.

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A new section of the foreshore has opened  and with it several new restaurants. Among these is Cinnabar – an opulent Asian restaurant which is run by a former banker and his business partner. Three friends and I get together every couple of months and have dinner; it’s lovely to see them and chat and between us we choose a nice restaurant and over a bottle of wine and good food we catch up.  I selected the restaurant on this occasion and chose Cinnabar as I had never been there.

The restaurant has a luxe look – stamped metal scales on one feature wall, beautiful black wood and translucent drapes. As soon as you walk in you are confronted with two huge terracotta warriors; they are striking and look fabulous; both wearing aprons which is rather cute.

(sources: http://www.foodpornjournal.com and http://www.thecinnabar.com)

I particularly loved the cosy but opulent booths around the side of the restaurant.

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The waiter sat us on a table which was half inside the restaurant and half out with a lovely view of the water.

 I had read that the crispy fried eggplant with honey and sesame sauce was a house specialty so I ordered that dish and my friends ordered the special duck floss rolls and the eggplant arrived on a lovely plate and the duck came in what looks like a stand that is used to hold ice cream cones…really cute.  I think I was expecting my eggplant to be more like what I had in China and whilst it was nice, there was a little bit too much batter and not enough eggplant.  My friends said the duck was delicious.

Our main meals were the kung pao chicken with Sichuan pepper and dried chillies, steamed Chinese broccoli with oysters sauce (for me), the pan-fried wagu beef with wasabi and ginger and a bowl of plain rice.

The greens were absolutely delicious and I was told the chicken and beef were very good.  All in all a good night but it was a bit sad that when we left at 7.30pm there was still only three other tables occupied in the restaurant.

My friends had been to the restaurant before and thought they used MSG so asked the question and our waiter diligently found out that they do; so we asked for it not to be used in our meals and our request was accomodated.  I like food much better without MSG.