Midweek munchies at Pearl (at the bar)

Pearl
631-633 Church St, Richmond (map)
9421 4599


As I have already mentioned, work has been crazy busy lately (and I was away last weekend) so I haven't been able to post as often as I'd like to on the blog. It was two weeks ago when best-friend-K and I decided to go see Lust/Caution down at the Como one night after work. I'd had the brainwave of suggesting dinner at Pearl (walking distance from my place, then we could walk over the river and down to the cinema in time for the late session), eating from the bar menu rather than the more exxy restaurant menu. I've eaten in the restaurant before and enjoyed it, but it's been over two years. Time to go back there again soon!


We shared three dishes between the two of us; the first was half shell scallops with green mango and green nahm jim ($10). Wish there'd been a bit more green mango included (I've become a real fan of the stuff since b-f-K and I had it at Seamstress with snapper in January), but nevertheless these scallops were lovely - the nahm jim was light and tangy and the scallops were fresh. Perfect way to start the meal, accompanied by glasses of the Marlborough Catalina Sounds Sav Blanc ($11 a glass).


Just to make our meal East-West-East, we'd decided that the second dish should be the prosciutto with hand made grissini and truffle oil, giant olives ($14). I don't normally go for antipasto in restaurants, but I liked the sound of hand made grissini. As kids, Buster and I were obsessed with sampling every brand of grissini we could get our hands on every time we went to Italy. We'd get so filled up on bread we'd barely have enough room to finish our pasta, let alone our secondi, contorni, formaggi and dolci! :)

This dish at Pearl was also very nice - we were particularly impressed with the meatiness of the olives. The grissini got the thumbs up too.


Our final dish to share was the pad thai noodles ($16). Apart from the kitchen OD'ing on the bean shoots, this was also very good - nothing spectacular, but then again pad thai isn't really a spectacular sort of dish, is it (Or am I wrong? Where can one get spectacular pad thai?).

It got to 9pm and b-f-K and I had enjoyed our meal, but were both pretty knackered from the day's work. We gave each other sidelong glances, cleared our throats and both confessed we'd rather take a raincheck on the film (it did go for nearly three hours, after all!), so instead we made our way back to my place for a Lindor chocolate ball and Cointreau on ice. I still haven't seen Lust/Caution, dammit (b-f-K, the traitorous swine most incredibly awesome best friend a gal could ever have, went and saw it last week when she was on leave!). I hear it's worth seeing! Hmmm, maybe next week...