The Silver Spoon

The Silver Spoon
691 Albany Highway, Perth Western Australia

I had heard about this place on the internet, so I shunted off an email to some lovely friends and we decided to go and check it out on one of their event nights. The one that we selected was the Jim Barry Wine tasting night - selected for the convenience of the day rather than that particular winemaker.

All in all we had a brilliant night, but there were hiccups. I'll get to those later.
We had loads of fun predominantly in the catching up with our dining companions. And I do really appreciate people that know me for me and can have fun with that :)
I also do really like getting tipsy and making de funz.

Okay, onto the restaurant. Well, I decided to listen to my husbands navigating. We knew it was on Albany Highway. Husband decided to use the GPS in his phone to navigate. Anyway, the street before the restaurant it tells us to turn right and then next left and then left again ... taking us back to 20m from where we turned off. He was not impressed when I said we could have gone the 20m and still come to the same round about. Teehee. Anyway, could not figure out why GPS gave those directions at all unless it was directing us to the car park at the rear.

We enter the restaurant and I can't see our friends (I am blind as a bat without glasses, and of course I never wear them - unless driving). Turns out they have done this set dinner on 2 long tables and we had 2 sets wedged in amongst everyone.
Not. Happy. Jan.
I get claustrophobic. It doesn't make me sit and rock back and forth. I get aggressive. Very. I don't like packed things. I put up with a packed Tim Ho Wan because it was Tim Ho Wan and because, whilst packed, we still had our own table.
Anyway, it was quickly rectified. I spoke with the Maitre'D (who turned out to be the very young owner of the restaurant, Steve) and we received a table of 4 for ourselves. Bliss.
The next real hiccup was the time it took to get anything. The blurb on the website said to be there at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Our friends got there at 7pm expecting there to be some sort of talk about the wines before the meal. We arrived just before 7.30pm as our sitter couldn't come before 7pm.

Our Amuse Bouche arrived at 8pm. Our 1st course at 8.30pm. Our 2nd course at 9pm and our cheese plate at around 9.30pm (I was well and truly tipsy by then so didn't note the time).
It was just too long.
We did all agree though that we liked the place enough to give it another chance, but not on an 'event' night.

So, what did we have?

Amuse Bouche - White Vegetable Soup with truffle oil. Lovely flavours. If I had to pick it would be that it needed to be that it was a lovely creamy texture and then you had small lumps - like you would if something was pureed incorrectly.

1st Course - Seared Scallops, confit pork, cauliflower, pomegranate, mint and squid ink. Scallops were perfection. The confit was not hat I was expecting. They were lovely flavour but the outside of the disk was quite dry leading into a very small area of moist pork. The salad portion was lovely and original.

2nd Course - Roast Beef fillet, parmesan gnocchi, exotic mushrooms, spinach and bone marrow jus. The meat was lovely. For me it was perfectly rare. 2 on our table had more medium-rare, but I was very happy with my piece. Very tender and tasty. The spinach was just spinach and the mushrooms were lovely, but I prefer it when they say the type of mushroom not just call them "exotic". I was not overly impressed with the gnocchi. I am of Italian stock. I have had mind blowing gnocchi. I am hard to impress.

2nd Course Sides - Roast duck fat potatoes. How can you go wrong? you can't!

Cheese Plate - Isigny St Mere Camembert with quince, muscatels, lavosh, pear and walnuts. Meh, I like to end dinner with sweets. It was an ordinary assortment of cheese that was too stinky for me, muscatels that had hard pips inside. The Lavosh and quince went down well though.

And of course there was lots of booze. All of it drinkable, none of it particular striking to me. I love rich berry flavours and/or some sweetness. I didn't find that in any of these. But you can probably see why I was a bit intoxicated by the end of the night, lol.