Mt Lawley 620 Beaufort St 6050
(08) 9228 8801
www.theponyclub.com.au
I had the great pleasure of dining at The Pony Club in Mount Lawley on Saturday night. I must admit that after reading both rave and scathing reviews of the restaurant, did not have very high expectations of the place and knew that it was going to be an expensive evening. Whilst the evening definitely hurt the hip pocket, I had a great time and was definitely impressed with the food, the wine and, of course, the company!
After trying for weeks to organise a girly catch-up between 5 very busy ladies, we finally managed to lock in a 7pm start on a busy Saturday night. We arrived a little late which didn’t turn out to be a problem as there was only a hand full of diners in the candlelit room. We were seated in a corner of the restaurant near the entrance. I thought this was going to annoy me as we would have people walking past us all evening, but to be honest I didn’t even thing about it again after 5 minutes of being there. If anything, the staff would maybe have regretted seating us there as we definitely got quite loud and silly towards the end of the evening
After taking a few happy snaps and settling in, we decided to order some drinks. It took quite some time to attract the waiters attention, but eventually a bottle of the Brokenwood Semillon ‘06 (Hunter Valley) ($37) was delivered to our table. One of us decided to get into the cocktails early and ordered an ‘Emma Dilemma’ (vodka, muddled pineapple, lychee and basil) ($14.50). Both were sensational, although we were disappointed to discover that we had actually ordered the last bottle of the Brokenwood as we would have loved another bottle.
With lots of girl talk and gossip to catch up on, a glance at the extensive tapas menu revealed that we were going to have to really think about what to order and how many dishes to get between us. Thankfully we turned the menu over and discovered that we could choose from 2 ‘banquettes’ - $50 or $60 per person which showcased the best dishes on the menu. We decided to go all out and order the $60 banquet. Sorted. (I’ll quote the individual prices next the to food which we actually ate to give you an idea of prices).
While we finished off the bottle of Brokenwood, some olives with chilli garlic and lemon fennel ($6) arrived at our table, along with some salted almonds ($6). As we got stuck into the appetisers, we noticed out glasses were empty and decided to order more wine. Again, it took ages for us to attract the attention of the waiter. When we finally managed to call someone over, we ordered a round of ‘Peachy Keens’ (pompero rum, peach liqueur, muddled peach and lime) ($14.50), a few ‘How’da Like Them Apples?!’ (apple vodka and liqueur, muddled apple and cardamon pods) ($14.50), as well as a bottle of the Lenton Brae late Harvest Semillon ‘04 ($27) and ‘The Yard’ Shiraz (Frankland River) ($38.00). The Shiraz was sensational.
Our next round of food arrived and consisted of:
Haloumi, pan seared with a chilli lime pesto ($9.80)
Char Grilled asparagus spears with goats curd and porcini oil ($11.30)
Truffled honey Persian feta crostini with walnuts and torn basil ($11.20)
House cured juniper salmon served with a beetroot and orange blossom salad ($14.80) and
Char grilled king [prawn with cucumber, paw paw and pomegranate molasses ($16.20).
My favourite dish was the Persian feta, which just melted in your mouth and was absolutely divine. Each serve also catered for 5 people, so we all got an equal share of everything with none to spare.
There was probably a half hour or 40 minute wait between this course and the next round of food, but that didn’t bother us as we kept drinking and talking and thoroughly enjoying the darkened atmosphere in the restaurant. By this time the restaurant was full and all the diners around us seemed to be having as good a time as us too. When our main courses arrived there was plenty of food to go around. Unfortunately, the menu on the restaurant’s website is obviously not the current menu as I cant remember some of the dishes that we were served. However, we were served with a curry-type dish with chick peas and tomato, a beautiful lamb dish with eggplant and lentils (my favourite dish of the evening, the lamb just crumbled when transferring it from the serving bowl to your plate), a fish dish and also another dish. Every dish was amazing! Most of the main dishes are around $30 per dish if bought individually.
After that we continued drinking (I am pretty sure another few rounds of cocktails were ordered), taking photos, ducking outside occasionally to the comfortable smoking area, generally laughing and having a fun time. We never felt like we had to leave now that we had finished and we spent at least another hour at the table after the main course had been cleared. During this time we also had Churros with chocolate ganach (think doughnuts to dip in chocolate sauce) ($10.50).
At the end of the evening we split the bill evenly. At $120 each (I actually though it was going to be more to be honest!) it was an expensive, but awesome evening. It was definitely a special “once off” night… I dont think I could justify spending $60 on just food for myself again anytime soon, but we all had a brilliant time and I would definitely recommend it for a group of people looking to try something different!
Food: 7.5/10
Drinks: 8/10
Service: 6.5/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Lisa Tibbits aka Mono Lisa
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