Wharf Road Restaurant – Nowra – New South Wales – Australia – December -2016

Tags

Australia, New South Wales, Wharf Road Restaurant

One of my favourite things – dinner with friends (overlooking the river)

Just before christmas last year, four of us from Canberra travelled just over two hours to the south coast of New South Wales for a weekend away at our friend’s home.  We decided to have an early dinner at a local restaurant overlooking the water about half an hour from our friend’s home…

The restaurant is really lovely and pretty relaxed with a lovely view through open doors and windows.  We sat in the large dining room which has a modern and light atmosphere with  wooden tables overlooking the water.

We were immediately seated at our table and I was one of the lucky ones to have a view of the water.

Unfortunately that is where the quick service stopped!  It took quite some time for our waiter to return to take our drink order then even longer for those drinks to arrive.  Some of my friends ordered beers, others including me, wine and someone else a cocktail which I had a sip of and was quite refreshing.

Whilst we waited (and waited) for our drinks, we chose our entrees and main courses to ensure we were ready for when our waiter returned with our drinks.

My friends started off with several serves of oysters natural with lemon and sherry vinegar dressing, also a plate of the tiradito of ocean trout over crispy tacos with a yellow chilli dressing and then the new season asparagus with pecora dairy goats curd and a fried egg dressing (a lot of dressing actually).  Two of my friends absolutely loved the ocean trout on the tacos!!

I wasn’t that hungry so I didn’t order an entree and had the summer salad with witlof and  blood orange pomegranate for my main course and some of the communal hand cut chips with two different sauces.

The menu was great for my friends as it has fresh local seafood as well as Wagyu beef.  One of the specialities of the restaurant is the alpaca from nearby farms which is dry-aged on the premises in a custom Himalayan salt brick cool room. Interesting but definitely not for me; I like alpacas (or any animal) running around paddocks not on a plate.

My friends ordered the pasture feed local wagyu beef with roasted beetroot and smoked carrot puree and the zucchini flowers with spiced ricotta, preserved lemon risotto and quinoa crunch.

Also the hot smoked blue eye trevalla with a white bean puree, broad beans, parsnip chips and an anchovy crumb, the linguini with mussels, clams with yellow chilli and lemon and finally the barbecue prawns with tamarillo salsa, smoked eggplant and lime.

All of the friends I was at the restaurant with have been there before and love the food.  For me, it was a nice evening but it’s another restaurant with some vegetarian dishes but each one had some sort of cheese accompaniment or included in the dish…so it was a limited menu for me (lucky I wasn’t hungry).  Views were lovely though as was the company of my good friends.