Rimondos

I went to pick GG up from his friend’s house the other week after he had spent the day with his work crew in the Swan Valley for their Christmas party. His friend’s house was in Landsdale and when he arrived another couple there had mentioned they were headed to a local restaurant for dinner. Apparently not a bad spot, decent food at reasonable prices. It had been a long’ish day and I wasn’t really in the mood to cook so we decided we would take a chance and see if we could get a table at this place. When we arrived the tables appeared to be overflowing so I didn’t rate our chances of them having room for us. But luck was on our side and there was a spare table for two, so while GG’s friends went to join the birthday party they were slightly late for, we sat a few tables away.

Décor wise, it was fairly simple inside, has the feel of a real family run business and it is clearly very popular given the teaming crowds in attendance on this evening. As well as this take away was available and a steady stream of visitors stopped past to pick up their orders.

I was pretty hungry so on perusing the menu we decided we’d start with the bruschetta pizza. It was sort of a plain pizza base, brushed with garlic butter and topped generously with freshly cut tomato, garlic, Spanish onion and basil. It was very tasty and being ravenous I wolfed it down.

Then for mains, GG and I both opted for one of the specials that had been described. GG for the Fish of the Day which was Dhu Fish served with a few prawns on creamy mash with a garden salad on the side. I decided the crab angel hair pasta with cherry tomatoes and snow peas sounded too good to pass up.

The main meals didn’t take too long to arrive, but the wait felt slightly longer given our table and my chair in particular was right under a particularly strong air conditioner vent. When the owner bought our meals around he must have noticed this… perhaps it was my chattering teeth, as he asked if I would like the temperature adjusted. Definitely made it more pleasant once I wasn’t under the artic blast.

So the food…. GG ate all of his fish and it did present well.

My pasta was fine… not overly generous on the crab front, but there were a few prawns throughout as well that helped. The crab itself was nice, but I’ve always thought of crab as quite a sweet meat and this was quite salty, which was a bit of a shame. I think what disappointed me most about the dish though was that for the most part it kind of just tasted like oily noodles…. Perhaps it needed a little more seasoning, but if you didn’t have one of the other ingredients with the pasta, then it was a bit bland.

We just stuck with water on the drinks front, so when the bill came to $95 I was a little surprised. As we drove home GG and I pondered whether a mistake had been made or if one of our meals had been off the charts expensive. Curiosity got the better of me so when I got home and I phoned the restaurant to ask the prices of the specials. Mine had been $33 which I think it quite pricey for pasta, but GG’s was $48! I know it said Market Price for the Fish of the Day on the menu, but I think that if a special is more expensive then any other item on the menu by close to $10 then it would just be polite to outline the price when the list of specials are given.

So I think I was left feeling a little less than satisfied with my visit. Yes the staff were lovely and the entrée had been nice, but I would think twice about paying $48 for a mains at a 5-star restaurant, let alone down at a local eatery. Perhaps I’m getting jaded in my old age and had just hoped that it was becoming more common place to read out the price of specials. Could just be me.