As always, we have tried to make an opportunity to go to a nice fancy sort of restaurant for birthdays (adult ones...), and for anniversaries. Due to the pandemic, that has been a touch tricky for the last couple of years... and when we have managed, we've tried to include the children as well... well, sometimes out of necessity as we didn't always have access to babysitters. Now, we are living in a town with a large family support network... and on this particular weekend, the grandparents and some of the extended family took our kids down to the coast to celebrate a cousin's birthday.
We stayed behind as we had work to do over the long weekend... yay for being musicians and having different work hours to the rest of the world! However, it did also mean that we had one evening free where we could just take the luxury to go and visit a nice restaurant in our new hometown... we are going to have many more to visit, as a new town to live in means that there are new batch of restaurants to discover and try out!
So, our first foray into fine dining in Canberra was the Vincent. Weirdly situated in the midst of the Canberra public service departments... it is really quite hard to find... from the front, it looks closed, and it shares a street number with an entire block of shops and department offices. Walking around to the front, it still seems like it is a closed premises!
The Space
However, when you enter... it is clear that you have come to the right place. Unusual seating arrangements, it is on high stools in a sort of "bar-like" arrangement with service stations surrounded by patrons... and if you have more than a handful of people, then you are seated at one of the few tables. It is a little bit strange, but sort of quite nice as well... especially if you land a corner like we did!
The Menu
Moving on to the menu... well, the tasting menu was always what we were going to be aiming for. Whenever we go to one of these fancy places, we do the multi-course menus... more to try out a little bit of everything rather than trying to guess a dish and possibly being disappointed!
Of course, if this is more a normal thing for you... then the a la carte menu is probably the way to go if you already know what is good or not! It appears that most of it is going to be dinner sizes of what is on the tasting menu anyway!
The Food
Starting off the menu was this interesting morsel of figs with dates, walnuts, and cream cheese. There also appeared to be some balsamic based sauce, but I wasn't quite sure about that! Very tasty, but it was a bit tricky to eat... you did end up having to divide it up into the individual bits... it was too big to eat in a single bite... which sort of defeats the purpose of mixing all these ingredients?
Next up, seared scallops coated in black sesame and various Japanese sounding ingredients! Again, very nice... clean with lovely crunchy and salty pieces of seaweed topping it off!
Cauliflower with dukkah, tahini, and rhubarb! I really wouldn't have picked all those ingredients to go together, but they did quite nicely... with a parmesan sauce on the side. I did steer clear of the sauce, as cheese of this sort can play havoc with my stomach... It reminds me to make use and try out the tahini that I have in our cupboard... I had a friend who would mix it up with a bit of honey to go on sandwiches.
Red Snapper with shellfish... this was a very nice dish, but the snapper had a very strange firm texture to it. Nothing disturbing, but unexpected for me.. I only really know snapper when it is done as fish and chips... and so that firmness of texture wasn't at all what I was expecting!
... ahhhh... lamb! Now that we are back to Australia we are treated to GREAT lamb! Honestly, the lamb in Europe is tough and too gamey for my taste, in fact... if I didn't know better, I would have thought that it was mutton most of the time.
Australian lamb, gentle and tender... yum!
Now... I haven't mentioned the drinks, but each of the tasting dishes had a matched wine to go with it. We decided against the matching wines, as that would have meant 6 glasses... and we are little people with an alcohol tolerance that would have been easily overpowered by that! So, I opted for a local craft beer (very nice...), and my wife had a very nice glass of Reisling.
Now, for the dessert... we did opt for a dessert wine. My wife took the matching one, whilst I took a Ximenez... which is a favourite of mine. However, her dessert wine was actually much better matched to the actual dessert... with a lighter taste, whilst the Ximenez... well, it is super sweet! However, I couldn't resist... as it it is harder to get a Ximenez here in Australia in comparison to Europe!
... and the dessert a Bailey's flavoured brownie! Very soft and crazily tasty! Loved it, and it was a stunning end to a what was a pretty damn good tasting menu!
The Experience
Although I had initial reservations about the seating arrangements, you do get used to it... and in the end, it is quite pleasant! Like I said, we were lucky and managed to get a corner and that was much better than having one of the long sides.
Anyway, the staff were friendly... the food was outstanding, and the wines were amazingly good. No complaints on that front... and for the price, it is a pretty good price for a 6 course tasting menu.
I would definitely return at some point... however, we do have a mission of trying out many more fancy places... so, we will keep this one in mind as a known quantity and quality... in case we need to bring visitors to somewhere nice to eat!
Opening Times
Monday Closed
Tuesday 12–10pm
Wednesday 12–10pm
Thursday 12–10pm
Friday 12–10pm
Saturday 6–10pm
Sunday Closed
Contact Details
Address: 48 Macquarie St, Barton ACT 2600
Phone: (02) 6273 7773
Website: vincentrestaurant.com.au