Thursday, November 25, 2010

Mission Restaurant and Bar - Chippendale

For an early Christmas dinner with old uni friends, we went to Mission Bar and Restaurant in Chippendale. My friend organised the private function - meaning a private upstairs room with art surrounding us (the Ng Art Gallery featuring Mariola Smarzak's work, Cantata). Lucky for us, our private dining room was slightly sound-proof in that the people downstairs are unable to hear the ruckus we were making :)

To start, we got warm flat lavosh bread with super yummy olive oil emulsion. The lavosh bread was suprisingly floury, but because it was warm and mixed really well with the olive oil, salt and pepper (or maybe, because I was hungry), I thought it was really pretty good.

lavosh bread with olive oil

On our function menu, we had a choice of either chicken liver parfait with caramelised eschallots and chargrilled bread (which I chose), or baby beetroot salad with roasted pecans, grapefruit and goats curd (which my partner chose). Some of my friends managed to get a third option of zucchini flower fritters. My chicken liver parfait was smooth and really rich. Not overly livery, it was subtly tasty - but only when slathered on the bread. Tasted better with the caramelised eschallots which adds a good balance to the whole thing. My partner's salad was pretty big - sure, not the most bling or flash, but I guess it was decently fresh and well seasoned.

chicken liver parfait with caramelised eschallots and chargrilled bread

baby beetroot salad with raosted peacans, ruby red grapefruit and goats curd

For the main, we had the choice of either a Chermoula baked blue eye trevella or a slow roasted lamb shoulder. My fish was cooked well - not too tough, it was still tender and seasoned well. It was sitting on top of a bed of pinenuts, raisins, parsley and preserved lemon curd. I loved the pinenuts, was ok with the parsley, and picked out all the raisins LOL. My partner's lamb was HUGEEEEEEE. It was lamb shoulder shredded with green cardamon, chilli and tahini. Didn't look appetising to me, but my partner said that it was good - just waaaaayyy too much of it :)

chermoula baked blue eye trevella with pinenuts, raisins, parsley and preserved lemon
slow roasted lamb shoulder with green cardamon, chilli and tahini

We had an interesting range of sides to share : green salad and rice. Nothing too exciting.

rice and salad

So the service was pretty good in that they didn't kick us out even with all the noise we were making. The ambiance was good. The food was decent. Overall - pretty good.

Ratings:
Food - 7.5/10
Service - 7/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 28.5/40

Mission Restaurant and Bar
3 Little Queen Street
Chippendale
NSW 2008
Tel:(02) 9318 0815

3 comments:

Simon Leong said...

i've been to a gallery opening upstairs and always wondered what the food was like in the downstairs restaurant. thanks for sharing. sounds like it's worth trying :-)

bbsnoopy said...

Umm - well... it's decent food
but it wasn't outrageously awesome so don't go in with super high expectations :)

Cathy x. said...

you should go check out berta. it's run by andrew cibej from vini with tama carey at the helm. she makes a wicked parfait. they have some pretty awesome drinks as well and a waiter who looks exactly like david chang from momofuku! :P