Star City
We just made it to the casino.
After we enjoyed our meal so much at Astral last Monday, we went back there for dinner this evening. Admittedly our choice was rather influenced by the fact that it was tipping it down and as I believe I have mentioned the casino is outside our back door.
We ordered the a la carte rather than the tasting menu or indeed the $1000 tasting menu, which included the obvious things to push the bill up: caviar, lobster, fois gras, French champagne (a good way to waste money in Australia). I had a very interesting smoked salmon and tomato tea to start, which I found to be more like soup than tea (I suspect the description "soup" was dismissed as not sufficiently exciting) and came with a gold leaf wrapped quail's egg. The flavours were good though. Sean had the lobster raviolo with a treacle and ginger sauce. It looked very good.
We both had the crispy skinned barramundi to follow, which came with oxtail tortollini and carrot and anise puree (surprisingly nice). Sean finished with a cheese platter and a good cheese platter it was too: 6 cheeses (from a choice of about 25), fruit and nut bread, biscuit things and fruit and nut chutney type things (including a date. I ate that.).
I had a bit of a pudding dilemma, but opted for praline cinq cent feuilles with fruit compote and chestnut ice-cream. The flavours went well together but the chestnut ice cream (which was the reason I plumped for this particular dessert) was a disappointment on its own, tasting mainly of sugar.
I had some coffee after dinner for the first time in a long time. Whenever I smell coffee, I think I must start drinking it again and this particular coffee was a "top shelf" one. I don't know what it means, but it sounded good. Unfortunately it didn't taste good - it was too strong for me and made me feel a bit ill. I think I shall stick to sniffing other people's in future.
We had taken our passports with us in case we were still awake at the end of the meal. We wandered down to the casino but clearly looked respectable enough to not warrant a passport inspection and were allowed straight in.
As we had been warned by our dining compatriots on Monday, the casino is a little tacky. My previous impression of the casino having been based on the white tablecloths of Astral, I think I had underestimated this. The casino was at least half filled with pokies (poker machines: pictures of cards are preferred to pictures of fruit here) and there was an almost continuous voice-over through the tannoy system, which was very irritating.
Sean had come up with a game over dinner for us to play in the casino. Admittedly it is not his game, he borrowed from someone else, however it is absolutely wicked.
You decide on how much you are prepared to lose, in our case this was $100. The stake was $5 so this equated to 20 goes at the roulette table. You then bet one chip at a time on number 8 until you either win or run out of money. Sounds boring huh? But that is not the game! The game is that you have to whisper with your compatriot every time before you bet on number 8 as if you are deciding where to play. If you run out of money you just shake your head and walk away, but if you win you should have amazed the gamblers round the table with your ability to pick a winner.
In our case it worked even better than we had hoped. It was quite fun just betting on number 8 anyway. We were too far down the table so we couldn't reach and had to keep throwing it across and asking the croupier to move it for us. They changed the croupier and the new one got used to putting our chip on 8 for us. The people at our table got bored and went away, which I thought was a shame as they would miss it when 8 came up, but just as some new people game over, it did! This was brilliant as it looked even more impressive to the newcomers as they had only seen the one spin! And best of all, the manager came over to see whether we were cheating or not!
We came out of the casino $120 up, although on average we will lose about $3 each time we stake $100. Still $3 is pretty cheap for a game as good as this!
Inspired by the casino, Sean has decided to learn how to card count in blackjack so he can make money, but I don't know how far he's going to get with this.
We just made it to the casino.
After we enjoyed our meal so much at Astral last Monday, we went back there for dinner this evening. Admittedly our choice was rather influenced by the fact that it was tipping it down and as I believe I have mentioned the casino is outside our back door.
We ordered the a la carte rather than the tasting menu or indeed the $1000 tasting menu, which included the obvious things to push the bill up: caviar, lobster, fois gras, French champagne (a good way to waste money in Australia). I had a very interesting smoked salmon and tomato tea to start, which I found to be more like soup than tea (I suspect the description "soup" was dismissed as not sufficiently exciting) and came with a gold leaf wrapped quail's egg. The flavours were good though. Sean had the lobster raviolo with a treacle and ginger sauce. It looked very good.
We both had the crispy skinned barramundi to follow, which came with oxtail tortollini and carrot and anise puree (surprisingly nice). Sean finished with a cheese platter and a good cheese platter it was too: 6 cheeses (from a choice of about 25), fruit and nut bread, biscuit things and fruit and nut chutney type things (including a date. I ate that.).
I had a bit of a pudding dilemma, but opted for praline cinq cent feuilles with fruit compote and chestnut ice-cream. The flavours went well together but the chestnut ice cream (which was the reason I plumped for this particular dessert) was a disappointment on its own, tasting mainly of sugar.
I had some coffee after dinner for the first time in a long time. Whenever I smell coffee, I think I must start drinking it again and this particular coffee was a "top shelf" one. I don't know what it means, but it sounded good. Unfortunately it didn't taste good - it was too strong for me and made me feel a bit ill. I think I shall stick to sniffing other people's in future.
We had taken our passports with us in case we were still awake at the end of the meal. We wandered down to the casino but clearly looked respectable enough to not warrant a passport inspection and were allowed straight in.
As we had been warned by our dining compatriots on Monday, the casino is a little tacky. My previous impression of the casino having been based on the white tablecloths of Astral, I think I had underestimated this. The casino was at least half filled with pokies (poker machines: pictures of cards are preferred to pictures of fruit here) and there was an almost continuous voice-over through the tannoy system, which was very irritating.
Sean had come up with a game over dinner for us to play in the casino. Admittedly it is not his game, he borrowed from someone else, however it is absolutely wicked.
You decide on how much you are prepared to lose, in our case this was $100. The stake was $5 so this equated to 20 goes at the roulette table. You then bet one chip at a time on number 8 until you either win or run out of money. Sounds boring huh? But that is not the game! The game is that you have to whisper with your compatriot every time before you bet on number 8 as if you are deciding where to play. If you run out of money you just shake your head and walk away, but if you win you should have amazed the gamblers round the table with your ability to pick a winner.
In our case it worked even better than we had hoped. It was quite fun just betting on number 8 anyway. We were too far down the table so we couldn't reach and had to keep throwing it across and asking the croupier to move it for us. They changed the croupier and the new one got used to putting our chip on 8 for us. The people at our table got bored and went away, which I thought was a shame as they would miss it when 8 came up, but just as some new people game over, it did! This was brilliant as it looked even more impressive to the newcomers as they had only seen the one spin! And best of all, the manager came over to see whether we were cheating or not!
We came out of the casino $120 up, although on average we will lose about $3 each time we stake $100. Still $3 is pretty cheap for a game as good as this!
Inspired by the casino, Sean has decided to learn how to card count in blackjack so he can make money, but I don't know how far he's going to get with this.
posted by Zoe at 10:37 PM
2 Comments:
Oh I love a good strong coffee!
Was your fish ok? Colleagues keep telling me theirs turned out overcooked.
The cheese platter sounded great, but I'm like you: 99% of the time I will go for pud.
Your roulette game is a funny one too.
Hi Helen
The fish was very nice - it certainly wasn't dry at all and the skin was very crispy.
In general I prefer it when the menu insists I have pudding and cheese!
Zoe
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