It Just Has To Be Delicious

Posts tagged ‘Applecross’

Nic and Kolo, Applecross

I’d been meaning to visit Nic and Kolo for some time, it always has great reviews and is in a sweet location amongst the cafes of Ardross Street. Run by Nicole and Ben (nickname Kolo), Ben’s nephew is Brendan Pang of Masterchef and Bumplings fame.

With a sleek smart interior, and cool clientele, we read the menu with excitement, and I ordered a glass of Clare Valley sparkling to start the mood. Sadly it was a little lacklustre and the bubbles quickly went flat.

The menu is a mixture of Asian fusion and modern Australian with a little Italian thrown in.

We chose to start with tempura cauliflower and broccoli with spiced tamarind dressing, and the charred housebaked sourdough with hummus. Both were good dishes which we enjoyed.

For mains my partner chose the harissa chicken with tabbouleh and snow peas. He enjoyed it but wasn’t blown away by it. It could have been a little more spicy but was tasty.

I chose the saffron linguini aglio olio peperoncino, with prawns and prosciutto chips. The prawns were good but there was way too much garlic in the dish, I love the flavour of garlic, but I don’t want to eat huge lumps of it and there was so much barely cooked garlic that it made the dish unpleasant to eat.

We decided not to stay for dessert. When the waiter cleared the plates he didn’t ask how the food was, even though I had left most of the dish. When we paid, I mentioned that it wasn’t a pleasant dish to eat, and was asked if I liked garlic. Of course I like garlic, but there was just too much almost raw garlic in the dish. I was then informed that this was a dish that the team were ‘experimenting’ with and there had been an issue with their pasta supplier, but no offer was made to refund the dish, or offer a return voucher, free breakfast or just something to make me feel better about the experience.

I left puzzled as to why the reviews are so good for Nic and Kolo. Maybe the breakfast is amazing, but I won’t be going back to try it.

Last Visit – April 2022

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Paste Thai, Applecross

We had heard good things about Paste Thai and were keen to try it, so we headed down to Applecross one Saturday evening for a nice Thai meal. The first obstacle with this venue is parking. It’s located in Kearns Crescent and the parking is chaotic, especially on a busy Saturday evening. I wasn’t sure if I had parked in a suitable space, so asked the waitress, but communication was a little difficult and she just nodded, so I left the car where it was and hoped for the best. The restaurant was equally as chaotic as the parking, busy, noisy, hot and humid, but we took this as a good sign and were looking forward to food.

We were seated near a wooden feature wall which was really quite dirty, it was covered in dust, and the crevices were full of grime and bits of rubbish. It does worry me when a restaurant does not keep the dining area scrupulously clean – it makes me curious about the state of the kitchen. Anyway, we went ahead and ordered.

The first dish to arrive was an entree of vegetarian curry puffs. There was absolutely nothing ‘curry’ about the puffs and I could not identify the vegetable inside – it may have been cabbage or potato, but either way, they were parcels of deep fried blandness. The pastry was nice, and the dip was good, but both were let down by the rest of the dish.

For our main course we ordered the chilli basil noodles with prawns and a chicken panang with steamed rice.

The panang was the best of the dishes but the chicken was small and overcooked, and there were no traditional thai eggplants in the dish, and no back flavour of thai basil, although the veggies were nice.

The noodles were okay-ish – quite hot – but not a lot of other flavours going on but we ate them anyway until the awful moment when my partner found a long black hair in the noodles. After this we both felt quite queasy and didn’t want to continue with eating.

We informed the wait staff about the hair and they apologised. On payment, the waitress gave us 10% discount which only amounted to $5 – we really should have had a full refund for the noodles. She promised that it would be better next time, but there won’t be a next time. Applecross is quite a trek for us, and not worth the time and effort to be let down by lacklustre dishes and poor hygiene.

Last visit date – March 2021

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