The Grace Darling, not to be confused with the Grey Starling, has served up pretty good pub grub for some time. It’s only recently however, with some new faces behind the scenes, that the quality of the food has translated into bums on seats.
The hipster crowd has flocked to it, like seagulls to a hot chip. On the Saturday night that we visited, it was particularly noisy, even for a pub.
I order the seared yellowfin tuna with anchoiade (caper, mustard sauce) and baby potatoes, which also arrived with a nice unadvertised addition of asparagus. A generous slab of fish was cooked to perfection, coloured on the outside, and nice and pink in the centre. The not-too-salty anchioade was a perfect complement, and butter potatoes provided some welcome carbs. Fantastic.
My girlfriend, who is a fairly harsh critic when it comes to meat dishes, ordered the burger, and could barely stop talking about how good it was for the next hour. Most dishes sit around the $20 mark, which is very reasonably for food of this quality.
Drinks aren’t quite so cheap, with the good range of beers let down a bit by some fairly hefty pricing. That’s a minor issue though, for the Grace Darling has gone from good to very good.
Archive for September, 2009
Grace Darling Hotel
Sunday, September 27th, 2009The Seafood Shak
Sunday, September 13th, 2009It was an unseasonably warm September evening, so fish and chips seemed in order. I had two new fish and chip shops to choose from, The Ol School Fish & Chips (566 Brunswick St, North Fitzroy) and The Seafood Shak (150 Scotchmer St, North Fitzroy).
I’d already had a burger and chips from the latter, so that seemed like a safe bet. There are nine different types of fish to choose from, but I opted for the standard flake. Three pieces of flake and minimum chips (not all for me) cost $18.60 and arrived pretty quickly, despite it being a busy night.
Each piece of flake was a generous size, very fresh, and cooked perfectly in clean oil. The batter was crisp and flavoursome, and the fish nice and moist. The chips were also well cooked, again in clean rice bran oil. This oil gives the chips a distinct flavour that’s quite hard to describe, and may not be be to all tastes, but I don’t mind them.
Next time I’ll try The Ol School Fish & Chips, but it will need to be good to better The Seafood Shak, which I think is the best fish and chip shop in Melbourne.