The Little Snail

Open 7 days for Lunch and Dinner
50 Murray St
Pyrmont, NSW 2009
Tel: (02) 9212 7512
Fax: (02) 9211 6706

Tonight we decided to have a get together with a few friends @ The Little Snail in Pyrmont. It's located on the corner of Murray Street and Pyrmont Bridge Road. There's a car park conveniently located right next door to the restaurant with the monorail on the other side, so it's an easily accessable place.

We met Anne & Wade outside. Rob & Anita were inside already waiting for us. We arrived and were led to our table upstairs, right next to the glass window which had an awesome view of nothing. The table was set with all the required cutlery and a sheet of white paper on top of the table cloth, in case you get bored and want to scribble on something.

We took a year and a half to decide on what wine we would have that night and ended up having a penfolds shiraz. The waiter seemed very annoyed and went to serve another couple who had just arrived. After another year, we ordered our food. The menu comes as a three course dining experience, so we all chose our sets.

I chose the smoked salmon salad with capers and rocket to start, the seafood platter for the mains and a vanilla crepe for dessert. The smoked salmon was lightly flavoured and not too oily, it melted in my mouth with a creamy texture. The salad that accompanied the salmon was fresh and crunchy with a nice white dressing which was slightly sour but matched well with the greens. The capers however, were there for decoration.

Next up was the seafood platter. This was an oily smorgasbord of seafood. There were calamari rings, beer battered flathead fillets, Grilled salmon with crispy skin, grilled mussels and a little salad to go with it. There's not much you can say to describe deep fried seafood, so I'm just going to say that it was yummy and filled with oily goodness. The Mussels were covered in a tomato based sauce. They tasted pretty bland without the sauce, but even with the sauce it didn't really do much to help the lack of flavour in the mussels. The salmon's "crispy skin" wasn't so crispy. I think it had been sitting on a bench in the kitchen for a while and re-heated. Although it wasn't too crispy, the salmon was still good.

Lastly there was the vanilla crepe with what appeared to be thawed frozen strawberries, vanilla custard, whipped cream and lashings of chocolate sauce. This in my humble opinion was the best part of the 3 course meal. The crepe was light and cooked golden brown. The combination of strawberry, custard & chocolate sauce was like a sexytime explosion in my mouth.

Betty ordered a mushroom, cheese and sundried tomato entree. Thw whole package went quite well together, with the contrasts between the creamy cheese and the condensed flavour of the semi dried tomatos.

Next up was the Grilled barramundi fillet. The fish wasn't overly fresh with a overwhelming lack of flavour. If it wasn't for the sauce and asparagus, it would have been below average (although they weren't anything special either.

Last of all was the sticky date pudding. This came with a caramel sauce and a large dollop of ice cream on the side & a strawberry. The pudding was pretty dry. It needed a lot of the caramel sauce to counterbalance the dryness. There wasn't enough sauce to go around to completely make up for the lack of moisture in the pudding. Even with the ice cream, it was still too dry.

Overall, I'd say the little snail is an average tasting but nicely located restaurant. ALthough this is tagged as 'french', i would say its closer to Modern Australian.