City Grill Rooms

535 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3000
Date visited: 31st August 2013

We met up with Chocolate Muffin, BB and a couple of her friends tonight for dinner.  MerlinFan and I had wanted to try the City Grill Rooms for some time now, so what better time than tonight.

I made a booking the night before for four, but company turned out to be five and possibly six later.  Now, the lady who greeted us at the door at first told us they could just fit an extra chair to the table rather than get us a bigger table, which was all right.  The ambiance was pretty average I suppose - we were seated in the corner of one side of the restaurant.  It was really noisy but it suited us fine with loud company.

BB took some time deciding on a red wine.  Our waitress responded to the BB's barrage of questions and <ahem> "madness" well.  She even let BB try one first before settling on The Signature wine from Yalumba. 

At this point, we were told we could move onto a larger table for six, which was appreciated.  Service although helpful and knowledgeable, wasn't the speediest - it took a while for our food orders to be taken.  Having said that, it was a Saturday night and the place was filling quickly.  Once our orders were put through though, food came pretty promptly.

We shared a Grilled Camembert with toasted ciabatta and zesty red onion jelly.  

Grilled camembert $13.50

MerlinFan loved the grilled camembert, felt it was the dish of the night for her.  The grilled cheese was salty and melty - it was warm rather than bubbling hot.  MerlinFan commented that all the components here, with the toasted ciabatta and the sweet red onion jelly just went perfectly together.  As nice as it was, I don't think anything can take the place of my beloved saganaki cheese.

We shared an entree of Baby back pork ribs.  You can get two ribs for $34, three for $48 or four for $58.

Baby back pork ribs $58

We all agreed the pork ribs were delicious.  It was juicy, succulent and the plentiful meat on the ribs just fell off the bone.  It could give our favourite ribs at TGIF a good run for its money.  The only thing that it was a tad lacking in was sauce, seeing in comparison the ribs at TGIF were glossed over with barbecue/ Jack Daniels glaze with an extra pot of sauce to add to your heart's desire.  

Now, everyone had steak in some shape or form (or cut) so I didn't bother taking photos of everyone's - they all looked pretty similar in dim lighting.

I had the Scotch 300g steak.

Scotch $34
Mushroom sauce $4.50

All the mains are served with chips or a baked potato.  I just had chips for lunch this afternoon so I opted for a baked potato, which came with sour cream on the side.   Anyways, I had my steak medium and it was really juicy and tender through and through, although it didn't quite have as much of that charry flavour I adored so much with the steak I had at The Boathouse.  Also, it was already grilled with traditional baste, which was delicious on its own. When the waitress asked if I wanted a sauce I hadn't realised it had to be paid for separately <grumble grumble> for $4.50, as in most restaurants, the sauce was included in the actual dish.  My own fault for not reading the menu properly being too busy talking.  Having said that, the mushroom sauce was nice, although somewhat superfluous - I still felt the steak was good enough even in its own baste.  If you're a sauce-y person, they offer black pepper, monkeygland, mushroom, garlic, blue cheese, green pepper and baste. Same goes for the pork ribs, if you really wanted you could get sauce on the side.

Overall, prices are not cheap and service was a bit slow but I would return for a juicy steak and pork ribs, and I'm sure MerlinFan would return for the grilled camembert.

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