Moreton Bay Bug Salad (QLD)
Bug Tails w Ruby Grapefruit, Oven Dried Tomato,Baby Cress,
Fine Eschallots & Avocado Puree, finished w Avruga Caviar

This was pretty excellent. I think everything went together perfectly in this course. I enjoyed the caviar, both on it's own and with the other parts of the course. I was a bit surprised with this as I'd never had much of a liking towards caviar until now - perhaps it was the specific type or maybe I'm just getting more accustomed to it. Either way, it was good.

Clearwater Sea Scallops (CAN)
Canadian Sea Scallops w Crab Ravioli
& Jerusalem Artichoke Cream

I feel really out of place giving my opinion on this as I'm still feeling pretty 'meh' towards scallops in general. I'm not sure why, I used to be crazy about them. Harris said that this was his favourite course out of the meal so I don't doubt that it was bad, I just didn't enjoy it all that much.

Watermark (Qld) Soft Shell Crab
Soft Shell Crab w Caramelised Pork Belly, Asian Salad,
Green Paw Paw, Nahm Jim Dressing

I'm in love with soft shell crab. This was the 2nd time that I've had it and both times has just been awesome. The accompaniments went will with the crab. I'm not really sure what the Nahm Jim dressing is and a quick wikiepedia/google search didn't help too much, maybe someone can fill me in.

Reef Fish of the Day
Pan Seared Fillet w Grilled Ocean King Prawns,
Braised Fennel & Blood Orange Butter Sauce

This dish was so-and-so to me. The fish wasn't anything great, but the prawn + blood orange butter sauce was very nice. It was a nice thick/creamy sauce and was the highlight of the dish.

Roast Duck Breast
w Crispy Duck, Asian Mushrooms, Asparagus
& Caramel Chilli Orange Sauce

I was getting pretty full by this point. The serving sizes of each course in this meal seemed a little too big, but you don't hear people complaining about that very often. I don't really eat a tonne in general anyway but anyway, I soldiered on. This was probably my least favourite course out of the ones we'd had so far, including the scallops that I wasn't crash-hot about. I think the caramel in the sauce made it way too sweet and any acidity in the mushroom/asparagus wasn't enough to balance it out. To their credit, the duck was cooked well.

Raspberry,Almond & Mascarpone Cake
Layered Raspberry, Almond & Mascarpone

This was pretty good, it's basically what it sounds like. The cake was like a sponge-cake with layers of raspberry. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Edith Ash Goats Cheese (SA)
w Turkish Figs, Dried Muscatels,
Falwasser Crackers & Lavoche

They actually served us Roquefort for this course and gave us a really healthy serving. I was ecstatic. It did not disappoint.

Tea / Coffee & Petit Fours

I didn't like the selection of petit fours that they gave to us. They seemed pretty bland and ordinary and dry and nothing special.

I had the wine pairings with each course and wasn't too happy with what they gave us. Everything seemed a little below average and not a single one of them stood out. I again forgot to get a list of what each of the wines were but wouldn't be recommending any of them to anyone. It wasn't that they were bad, per say, just not very good and I felt a little let down by the restaurant. They also did a poor job of explaining what each was or why it would go with the course they were serving, sometimes not telling us or the waitress would whisper into either Harris or my ears and then leave, leaving us to explain what we were drinking to each other. I'm feeling all snobby now but I think at a upper class restaurant like this was a better level of service should be expected.

To their credit again though that was probably the only part of service that was bad - the staff was very pleasant and nice but I guess they could use a little more training, or they should have had the sommelier pour our wine for each course as they did at Restaurant 2.

The degustation meal was $95 plus an extra $50 for the wines.

Overall I'd give it a 6.5/10. I'm not in a rush to go back there but would be willing to try it again in a few months.

So I wasn't planning on playing any poker tonight but fired up Stars to see if Harris was playing at all after tonight. He was only like 8 tables from 5/10 to 25/50 PLO. I sat in at two of his 5/10 tables. I have absolutely nothing to say except to show these two pics of my session:





Poker is ****ing silly.

I went away for the weekend with Mark, Kristy and Laura. Basically all we did was drink, watch sports, and bet on sports.

Conclusion: I run bad at sports betting. I run worse at PLO.

I lost $1.3k sportsbetting random games vs mark and lost like $3k playing 5/10 and 10/20 PLO for like an hour. Then I got home and lost $1k playing 15/30 LO8 and another $2k playing 3/6 PLO.

I'm now back to being almost even for the month again. This is so fucking frustrating.

I suck. Last night Mark, Harris, Nauv and I played chinese at 100 a point. At one point I was +5k or so and I ended up +100. We then flipped for a few hands and I ended up down 2.5k.

I've just basically lost money every day for the last 10 days or something silly.

I'm heading to Vegas tomorrow morning, my flight is at 11am. Sooooooo not looking forward to it. Bleh.

ROY'S GIMMICK ACCOUNT REVEALED INVOLUNTARILY!?

JESUS CHRIST I RUN BAD AT CHINESE POKER

-$6.8k tonight

Mini-TR is that we went out to dinner and afterwards played chinese for about 8hours till 6am. I was so ridiculously card dead it isn't funny. Now i have to pack and leave in like 2 hours. (*#YWT#HUFOIQHVWCwyfih3qf8uh3fh98ri93FQIJAF