The place was pretty quiet on a nasty night early in the week as the boats bounced and chafed at their moorings, although I remember the waterside deck being very pleasant in the Crew Club days. Indoors, the Professor and I enjoyed the undivided attention of a waitress from Birmingham who was a breezy conversationalist. From one of the elevated booths along the eastern wall, we found ourselves talking to her as a High Court judge talks to the court clerk (I suspect they work better for a group of six or eight).
As to the food: that kokoda was nice enough, with toasted rice and radish providing welcome sharp textures but a venison tartare consisted of small dice of meat in what looked like cold gravy. I would have had no idea what animal it came from without the menu's help and the lashings of horseradish cream were seriously out of proportion to the dish as a whole.
The Professor's ricotta dumplings were very bland, really: they were far larger than gnocchi, and accompaniments of kale and kumara puree made for nice plating, but, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there was no there there.
But I made a happy choice in the coal-roasted lamb shoulder, a generous serving of silky-rich meat, sliced thick and accompanied by a vinegary dressing foregrounding olives, which cut cleanly through any fattiness. They were just the ticket with a side of roast spuds that had been crushed before finishing off under a grill, I think, and were the best potatoes I've ever had.
That dish was almost good enough to make me forgive an "apple crumble" that the waitress had warned us was deconstructed.
I was up to the challenge: it was a catastrophe. A bowl of ginger icecream, really, with parings of tepid apple and cold nashi and a sprinkling of something crumbly.
It made me resolve never again to eat anything described as deconstructed. I want my dinner built up, not taken apart.
