Fuse Bar @ Hotel Northbridge
Posted by | Categories: Perth, Pub, Restaurants
As high as a kite on French champagne and with Rochelle Adonis‘s exquisite high tea delicacies still swimming around on my palate, my friends and I skipped over the road from her studio to the Hotel Northbridge to extend our celebratory mood a little further into the afternoon. After leaving the bright and clean environment of Rochelle’s, the grimy stark reality of the empty pub was initially a little off putting but good company has a way of distracting your attention from these details and we soon sat to continue our chatter and giggling. Of course we wanted to continue drinking champagne and therefore we were all a tad disappointed to read the drinks menu only contained Australian bubbles. For an exorbitant $68 we got a bottle of Chandon Brut and ordered a tasting plate, salt and pepper squid, and fries.
The food arrived fairly quickly, but we were left totally confused as to how to ration four serviettes, three forks, four knives and one plate amongst the six of us. Odd. I would have also liked to have been informed when I placed my order for the food that the salt and pepper squid actually came on a bed of fries as we didn’t really need the second bowl. Needless to say one can see from the photo that the salt and pepper squid wasn’t really such. Deep fried battered squid would be a more appropriate description as the dusting was nearly thicker than the squid itself. The added touch of MasterFoods squeeze-on packets of sweet chilli, tartare and tomato sauces didn’t raise the appeal much either. If you want to charge me $17.50 for such a dish then you had better make an effort on presentation or at least increase the size of your serves to make it good value – this dish had only twelve small pieces of calamari!
Moving onto the tasting plate we were preparing ourselves for the worst. Seriously, what were we thinking coming from High tea to this? If only Rochelle let us have another course! The tasting plate contained a paltry four thin strips of Turkish bread, some tasteless cubes of fetta, two small bowls of watery inedible dips, a handful of jarred olives, a pile of chorizo, about one teaspoon of very scary looking sun-dried tomatoes and some olive oil. The chorizo was the low- light and no one could eat it. It had an unusual taste that wasn’t pleasant.
Disappointed with such poor quality food, a rebellious streak started to emerge from our little group. By this time our over-priced bottle of average sparkling was well and truly empty so we decided it would be a fabulous decision to sneakily pop open our remaining bottle of Cattier from high tea. Anyone tried to open champagne sneakily? After a delayed and unsuccessful attempt at smothering that wonderful popping sound with laughter and coughing, the bartender scurried over to inform us we cannot drink our own bottle. We offered to pay corkage but she wasn’t willing to bend the rules. Fair enough. One of my girlfriends surprisingly managed to squeeze the cork back into the bottle, only for it to pop out later at an impromptu time during our drive home whilst traveling on the back seat. Needless to say the car still smells like celebrations!
Service 5/10 venue 4/10 food 3/10
Fuse Bar @ Hotel Northbridge Cnr Brisbane and Lake St, Northbridge, 6003 | (08) 9328 5254 | www.hotelnorthbridge.com.au/bar.php
High Tea at Rochelle Adonis
Posted by | Categories: Desserts, High Tea, Perth, Restaurants, Wedding
For months I have been bursting out of my skin to get myself to Rochelle Adonis for her acclaimed high tea! So when my love and I attended a boutique little wedding expo at Mosmans recently I was attracted to her stall like a moth to a flame. Her passion and gentle nature increased her appeal to me even more and I immediately decided I wanted to have one of her exquisite cakes for our upcoming engagement party. This provided me with the perfect excuse to organise a girly afternoon out with some friends for the purpose of “engagement cake tasting”.
For us foodies in the know, we are all very thankful to have such a world class pastry chef of this calibre residing here in little Perth. Rochelle grew up in the French Canadian city of Montreal before moving to Sydney to train as a pastry chef. She then moved to London where she worked in an exclusive wedding cake boutique making cakes for the rich and famous including both the British and Saudi Royal families before she moved onto to Vienna to work in the prestigious Hotel Sacher.
Returning to Australia, she was acting head pastry chef at Forty One in Sydney before joining Matt Moran’s at Moran’s and then once he opened Aria as the head pastry chef there. She moved to WA in 2001 with the ambition of starting her own business and has grown from a small scale home kitchen beginning to the highly acclaimed boutique she has today.
Upon entering her studio, you will be distracted by all the eye catching photos decorating the walls with examples of her handy work. Each cake is prepared with upmost attention and care and they almost look like they couldn’t be real. The two long communal marble tables fill much of the room giving the feeling you are sitting in someone’s kitchen rather than a café. We all came very prepared with enough champagne to sink a ship and with high expectations to have our tastebuds buzzing. We most certainly were not disappointed. Our only complaint was it all ended way too soon! We could have easily done with another few courses!
We all came very prepared with enough champagne to sink a ship and with high expectations to have our tastebuds buzzing. We most certainly were not disappointed. Our only complaint was it all ended way too soon! We could have easily done with another few courses!
The first course was savoury. After my recent enforced gluten indulgences, I thought it best that I stick with her gluten free options – I was after all actually taste testing for a party that will occur once I’m back on the straight and narrow gluten free. My plate contained a cup of creamed corn soup, a vegetable frittata, a cube of pork terrine and a falafel with some harissa. The soup was hot and seasoned perfectly warming us all up as we waited for our champagne to take over the job. The pork terrine had a dollop of horseradish and Dijon mayonnaise. The short sharp heat of the horseradish blended harmoniously with the lingering flavours of the terrine and was the highlight of the four.
The girls also had the pork terrine and the soup on their plates. Their gluten-filled options included a vegetable galette with goat’s cheese and Rochelle’s famous cucumber sandwiches using entirely homemade ingredients including her own handmade butter. The sandwiches looked so cute all cut up in perfect little rectangles sitting in a row.
Our second course was desert. My plate contained mint ice cream with Valrhona chocolate, raspberry jelly, meringue with lemon curd, blueberries and violet, and a blood orange salad on top of a moist butter cake with gooey brulee style custard. The ice cream was not overly sweet or sickly, nor was it too creamy. It had the perfect balance with a fresh minty aftertaste leaving a clean fresh feeling on the palate. My first glancing impressions of the raspberry jelly reminded me of Turkish Delight. Not being the biggest fan of this I was pleased to find an absence of Turkish’s signature delicate rose flavours replaced with a much preferred and rather strong tarty berriness. For those who know Chompchomp well – you will be aware I am a huge fan of all things berry. Well, berries generally come shaped in little balls – and I’m a sucker for food in little balls. The meringue was one of my favourites. It contained all the elements of a well-made meringue: crunchy, chewy and soft, and the accompaniment of sharp tangy lemon curd moved seamlessly into the gentle after notes of the more subtle violet and blueberries.
The blood orange salad tasted like Rochelle had successful managed to capture Spring in a cup! Seeing as our one week teaser of Spring weather has turned viciously back to wet winter windiness I was so thankful to be reminded glorious Perth Spring was just around the corner. Buried deep below the array of sweet blood orange and delicate petals was a layer of brulee and dense orange butter cake. I nearly stuck my fingers into the bottom of the bowl to clean out the last remnants.
By this point we had polished off a bottle of Moet, a bottle of Cattier and a bottle of G.H. Mumm champagne and we were all in very fine form. We really didn’t want our experience to end and thus were determined to carry on with our celebrations. After pondering for some time at the counter, a number of us bought more little cakes, nougat and other delights to take home to share with our loved ones who missed out on the delightful experience. We then all skipped over the road to the Hotel Northbridge to continue our festivities. Oh boy what a contrast in standards of customer service, ambiance and food would we find there!
Venue 8/10 Food 9.2/10 Service 7.7/10
Rochelle Adonis 193 Brisbane St, Northbridge, 6003 | (08) 9227 0007www.rochelleadonis.com
