Flower Drum

nicolavanlaar

Pillar of Melb's dining community still strong 19th August 2007

4 found this helpful

Our girl's weekend in Melbourne had now grown to five of us, with the addition of Lisa, for the Saturday night dinner at Flower Drum.

Our taxi driver was bloody useless and dropped us off back at our hotel. Thankfully I had printed off a whereis.com free map and could direct our second uselss cabbie, to the corner of Bourke St (major shopping precinct in the City) and Russell St, and we hoofed it the rest of the way in the drizzle.

Really, the restaurant has only been opened and critically acclaimed for over 30 years, how difficult can it be to find 17 Market Lane off Bourke Street???

It is an unassuming building, with a door down a darkish side laneway. You head up some stairs (or use the lift) and come upon a large open dining room with strategically placed screens and large floral arrangements.

We found it easier for the purposes of rapid-fire conversation (such as, "if you could be buried with only one book, what would it be?") to just order the 6 course plus fruit Chef's Degustation Menu for $150 per head and move on to a Gin & Tonic. We sorely needed them after the taxi-debacles! :)

The menu included:
1. A delicious mild creamy Crab concoction, served in the whole crab shell.
2. San Choy Boy - quail I think...
3. Salt and Pepper Red Emperor fish on deep-fried Enoki mushrooms, which we arranged to have some squid included.
4. Two generous serves of Peking Duck Pancakes.
5. Black Bean Balmain Bugs cut up in the tail shell.
6. Eye Fillet steak cooked medium rare (and quite chillied), with steamed Boy Choy and fried noodles. This pushed us all over the edge, was a bit disappointing and none of us could finish our portions!
7. A gorgeous light, refreshing fruit platter to share and home-made almond biscuits.

The service was extremely professional and polished. There was an excellent diner/waiter ratio and every need was anticipated. Nothing was too much trouble.

Unfortunately, we now know why they lost a hat recently and dropped out of the top 100 World's Best list. The food was good but not great. There wasn't any star ingredients used or luxe products or unusual combinations to wow us. We felt we could get the same Chinese food in Sydney... although we were pretty happy with the simple fruit platter at the end, which is saying something!