deal breaker

Perhaps my expectations had been too high.

But then, so much has been said about Garibaldi that surely one would step into this Purvis Street restaurant with high expectations, no?

The thing is, the quality of the meal was good. I have no complaints about the standard of the food, as well as the service. But the selections for the $28 set lunch was quite disappointing.

The good news is that the starters were not bad - a salad, a soup and a salmon carpaccio.

I was quite fond of the soup of the day - a clear porcini mushroom broth. Very tasty and also, for me the first time I had a non-creamy mushroom soup. Very refreshing.

When it came to the mains, however, I had a hard time choosing.

There were three types of pasta - one with pine nuts and pesto, another with a creamy prawn sauce, and the third I forget. There was a deep fried fish (sole I think) with a zucchini sauce. There was also a chicken stew.
The two non-pasta dishes, to me, screamed 'this fish and chicken aint too fresh' so I decided to steer clear of that.
I had to narrow it down to the pesto pine nuts pasta, because I'm not too fond of creamy sauce (although it did look quite good on the plate across from mine).

Pasta was good but just uninteresting.

I guess I should've gone with instinct and tried one of the specials the waiter announced to us - pappardelle with rabbit. Something I've been meaning to try.

Dessert turned out to be coffee ice-cream, which I didn't finish. Was more interested in drinking the coffee that came with the set lunch..

Despite this, I still am keen to try other restaurants' lunch deals. First to convince people to join me for lunch...

Currently playing Ron Sexsmith's Nothing Good