Taste

Taste is essentially your evening meal option in Rutherglen if you don’t fancy eating in the pub or a having a fast food meal. But, it doesn’t quite work. For a start, key things it offers are expensive if you don’t take the pizza option. Mains and entrees are steeply priced. Mains start at $35. The specials are $38. A humble cheese plate is $25. Essentially Taste is pitching at an upmarket dining option but it misses the mark. Our mains were ordinary. Further details are on my Zomato and TripAdvisor accounts. Our meals - mine lamb, my partner the fish and scallops - were too small and lacked flavour. They were also expensive. There were other issues as well. Overall it was a sub par meal at Taste for us. It was overpriced and didn’t deliver as promised. I’d had a bit of difficulty attracting the server a couple of times so I went up to the counter to pay. I was asked what I thought of the experience and I did what I always try and do in these thankfully rare situations. That is, I just give a blandish semi evasive sort of response. I didn’t say what I really thought. I didn’t want to so I just tried to fudge the thing and give a signal that it was best not to proceed. The server did what experienced servers rarely do in these situations. She persisted and asked me for detailed feedback. Although I’d be more comfortable getting a root canal, I reluctantly gave the feedback, and very gently in a way that (accurately) suggested that I was uncomfortable doing so. The atmosphere went very cold. It wasn’t the response the server wanted. We left feeling very awkward. The night was therefore unsuccessful. I’ve loved Rutherglen and its wine district for years. We are long time visitors to the area. But we were hungry and unsatisfied. We also felt under pressure rather than happy. We’d paid around $150 to feel like this. We trouped unhappily back to our accommodation. I was glad they’d thoughtfully provided complimentary Chamber’s Muscat.

We called and booked at Taste only an hour before eating there. We were a bit apologetic that at short notice, we were bringing a gluten free pescatarian - we try to give more notice than that! To their credit, they didn’t panic, they got input from both chefs, and delivered me a “seafood special”, featuring a terrific Jerusalem artichoke mash. My husband adored his bread and butter pudding.

Between my partner and I we had 5 dishes from the menu and each was superbly prepared and presented and flavours exquisite. Better than most flash Sydney restaurants. Service was friendly and warm and Chef came out and served as well which is refreshing and welcome. Completely disagree with Two Sheds review from 5 months ago. We'll done Taste, a thoroughly enjoyable experience and would love to come back again.