fitzroyalty

Ink seafood restaurant (single page site only, no menus Update 24 July 2008 - Ink now have a beautiful looking website with menus) is located on the corner of Alexandra Parade and Rae St in the southern border of North Fitzroy. Alexandra Parade divides Fitzroy and North Fitzroy and is not the greatest location for a restaurant - several lanes of constant traffic, no other entertainment venues on the same block and little passing foot traffic compared to Brunswick St or St George’s Rd.

This is probably why I’ve looked at it from across the road many times and made a mental note to eat there, but then gone somewhere else based on a spontaneous decision that does not include walking along the north side of Alexandra Parade.

This is the issue Ink faces, and it is a shame because once I tried it last Wednesday night, I realised that Ink is one of the secret dining treasures of the Fitzroy area, and one that should be much better known and appreciated. I can’t find a single web or blog review of Ink, and that too is sad, but also good for me in that I can be the first to rave about how good it is!

My girlfriend and I attended the opening of the My Pet Rock exhibition at Pieces of Eight jewellery gallery on St George’s Road in North Fitzroy, and had made a booking at Ink to compliment the direction of our evening walk. Dinner began with a crisp Mount Langi Pinot Grigio and a surprise appetiser of squid ink arancini, which were delicious.

For entrees we chose the salmon cured with beetroot and horseradish (first photo) and the seared yellowfish tuna with avocado and salsa (second photo). Both were excellent but the salmon was truly divine - a very subtle flavour that was enhanced afterwards on the palate with a sip of the excellent Pinot Grigio. In the photo it is too fluorescent pink, which is close to reality, but it was impossible to photograph accurately.

The menu offers a range of main dishes and there are also set platters to choose from but what inspired us was the last page on the menu, which offers options to enable diners to build their own platter from a range of entree sized dishes featuring scallops, prawns, moreton bay bugs and other crustaceans. Each kind of seafood is offered in at least three styles, ranging from classical French or Italian sauces to spicy Asian flavours. What a magnificent challenge!

We chose the prawns in a white wine and garlic sauce, moreton bay bugs with plum sauce, scallop mornay and barbequed Korean chilli and lime squid with a Greek salad. The most unusual dish is the scallop mornay. The scallops are presented on their shells, and the mornay is a sauce surrounding the scallop, cheesy and salty as it should be, but not the traditional mornay most people would imagine. The prawns were delicious, the bug fresh and tender, and the chilli squid was amazing, albeit too hot for my girlfriend so I had to eat most of it!

I chose a Marlborough region Twin Islands Sauvignon Blanc to accompany these dishes, which was crisp and buttery and delicious with the diverse flavours of the dishes we chose. The wine list was extensive by the bottle and modest but well selected by the glass, with several Victorian favourites on the list. I had recently enjoyed Mount Langi’s Billi Billi Shiraz at L’Espresso in Ballarat and was pleased to find their Pinot Grigio on the list, which also features T’Gallant’s divine Moscato.

Desert had to be the Volcano chocolate lava pudding, served with cream. Ink is not Iron Chef, so there were no fish flavoured deserts.

Ink’s other strength is its staff. The wait staff were attentive and discrete and also chatty and charming. We were debating who was crooning the background music. I thought one song was Julio Iglesias but my girlfriend thought it was Michael Bublé (we don’t listen to this kind of music so we had no idea). The waitress confirmed that the singer was ‘the boobs’ as he is known at Ink. The staff were very informative and helpful in guiding us through the process of making our own platter, determining how much food we wanted and suggesting combinations of dishes.

As a fine dining restaurant Ink is not cheap, though it represents excellent value for money. It is now definitely on my list of favourite places in Fitzroy and somewhere that I can recommend without hesitation. The dining room is pleasant, the service is of the highest standard and the food is remarkable.

And you get your own personal tongs to aid in transporting the delicious creatures from the platter to your plate! Another amazing thing Ink does is after the main meal is finished, a small bowl was brought to the table and in it were placed what looked like two large white mints. I was slightly confused until the waitress poured hot water from a jug over them, and the ‘mints’ expanded into warm hand towels so we could wipe all traces of seafood from our finger before desert.

I want Ink to survive and prosper and think they deserve to based on my experience. My only recommendation is that Ink improve its marketing. It needs a comprehensive website that sells the menu and the experience, and it needs its delighted customers to praise it to all their friends.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 12:09 am and is filed under Alexandra Parade, Fitzroy, North Fitzroy, Rae St, business, customer service, food, wine.
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