Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Pony

14-15 The Rocks Centre
Cnr Kendall Lane & Argyle Streets
The Rocks
Sydney 2000
Ph: 02 9252 7797

Eating out with friends I can say is a thing I enjoy doing quite a bit. There's almost nothing like a good dinner with your mates, a few glasses of wine and a good atmosphere. The only thing that beats it is a dinner with Betty!

The destination for our little get together is Pony. This is the sister restaurant to the Steel Bar and Grill, so you can expect a fairly good steak, entree's & wines.

We started the night off chatting away with Chris getting to know the rest of the group and soon our starters arrived. We had some Steamed edamame with murray river pink salt, A tasting plate of grilled chorizo, manchego cheese, murupi chillies, marinated olives, butter bean and tomato salad, cumquat and pear chutney and lastly Baked eggplant, basil and fetta rolls, tomato sugo.

Edamame has now become one of our favourite snacks when eating out. It's just so wholesome and tastes so good with the salt crystals lightly sprinkled on the outside. You can never go wrong with edamame.


The tasting plate was a quite good, but not enough to really share around with six people. The chorizo had a nice balance of saltiness and meatiness when compared with the chorizo from waqu. It had a lot more flavour and the texture had a better feel in my mouth. The manchego cheese was a slightly hard but not too salty type of cheese. When eaten with the cumquat and pear chutney, it was delicious! Now the murupi chillies were a little strange to me. I haven't ever seen little ball shaped chilli's before, but I can say that these are better than your average jalapeno. The flavour was acidic with a hint of sweetness which made it taste a little more like eating a hot little pickled capsicum. I'd definately have it again as a snack.


The baked eggplant was not bad, but not that great either. It was a little plain in comparison to the rest of the starters. The upside was, that it was served with a few slices of turkish bread. It was almost like spreading avocado over turkish toast but not quite as nice.


Mains were up next. I had the Eye fillet, slow cooked beef cheek ravioli, wilted spinach, horseradish cream.

The eye fillet on the bone was cooked exactly to how I would expect a medium rare cut of beef to be done slightly red on the inside, pink and then brown on the outside. I'm salivating now thinking about it again! The steak itself was soft, succulent and so full of natural flavour I really want to eat it again right here right now. It was presented on a bed of wilted spinach which was really only there for decoration since the steak was the main attraction.


Betty had the gnocci with mixed vegetables.

The gnocci was quite soft, almost like eating sticky rice but fluffier, it was delicious, but slightly too oily. The marinated vegetables were cooked just right bursting with their natural flavours, with some added herbs & seasoning.


Ann had the Crisp pressed duck, sweet potato mash, bok choy, bitter-sweet orange sauce.

Jeremy had the Tasmanian Salmon, salad of pickled beetroot, orange, mint and fetta.


Jenny went with the Sirloin, thick cut chips, watercress salad, béarnaise.

We also ordered a side of Dutch cream potatoes baked with parmesan.


We were keen on desert & ordered three off the menu.

This passionfruit dacquoise (i'm not sure of the spelling) was divine. Lemony, passiony, coconutty, sweet & citric goodness this was my favourite out of the three that we ordered.


The creme brulee was disappointing actually.. it came with poached pear slices (it tasted like canned fruit) and the shortbread - was probably the nicest on the plate.


We also ordered an apple tart, totally regret ordering this as there was nothing special about it at all (hence no picture hehe). The apple was not soft but abit hard and undercooked for a tart, and the pastry wasn't impressive either.

Tonight everyone enjoyed their dinner, it even pleased the fussy eater Jeremy who cannot eat any kind of red meat due to it's flavour. He's an avid pork / seafood eater. I'd recommend Pony to anyone who would like to have dinner and chat with their friends in a nice quiet environment.

Cheers :)

2 comments:

Betty @ The Hungry Girl said...

food looks delicious! will add this to my list of places to try. thanks :)

Two fit and fun gals said...

Betty: Oh you have to - they will have a diff menu aswell since they change every few mths