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Modern Australian$$
When we read the Subiaco Continental’s PR blurb it said stuff like “Paris meets New York”.
We expected it would be modern, but perhaps with a mild heritage aesthetic, a restaurant with texture, an homage to the patinaed bistro/bars of the Lower West Side or the 6th.
It wasn’t. It was decorated like the foyer of an international brand airport hotel, a gob-smacking expanse of Scandinavian understatement, blonde wood timbers, simplicity and white. Lots of unrelenting white. It’s slick, modern and sparingly beautiful.
Owner Miles Hull is not new to this game. It’s fair to say he knows his stuff. So we can only surmise that when this monster room is full of people, they – we the people – are the colour, the texture, the mood makers.
Which proved to be so, as the sun dipped, the lights dimmed and the Subiaco Continental filled with drinkers and date-nighters. It went off like a frog in a sock. There were even kids in prams and chaps wearing flannelette shirts.
Bingo. Of course. It’s a pub. That’s what we weren’t expecting.
The food is good, a little hit-and-miss, but easy to order, easy to share and easy on the eye.
Front of house is run by the very experienced Katie Chan and the kitchen is piloted by the talented Marcello Segalina, who previously ran Hull’s kitchen at Jetty in East Fremantle.
Let’s eat.
Smoked ham hock croquette was not your average croquette. It wasn’t bechamel-based. Instead the shredded, long-cooked hock was bound with a jelly of reduced piggy bits and it was a stunner. It was deep fried – which loosened up the stock jelly and warmed it – and simply dressed with a squirt of a tarragon mayo and a half a cornichon. Perfect.
“House gildas” were pintxos, tiny skewers of green olive, anchovy and a sliver of guindilla pepper.
Not sure of the brand, but the anchovy fillet was clearly high quality and the small green guindilla chilli finished off the two bite morsel with an acidic, mild chilli heat. It was a little too vinegary, but lovely.
Pickled mussel toast was another cracker of an appetiser. Thin soldiers of crunchy, buttery toast were layered with a “saffron mayo” – imagine a rouille without garlic – pickled mussels, thin slivers of pickled white onion and a sprig or two of herbs. Simple idea, well executed.
There’s a couple of pastas and a “raw bar” with oysters and a chilled seafood plate for two ay $58.
Oysters are served natural or “torched” with an “XO salumi kilpatrick”. The XO dressing had more power-punching umami than a bag of MSG. It was so butch, so hairy chested, so damn muscly it could have had its own centrefold in a fireman’s calendar. Only trouble, the oysters were king hit by its massive, alpha flavour. No joke, we couldn’t taste any oyster flavours, at all. Own goal.
Mains are all easily shareable. Confit duck was good, better than most. You have no idea how often confit is cooked too hot and too long, rendering it dry and stringy.
Subiaco Continental’s was accurately brined and cooked well. It had the moist, fudgy, well flavoured meat one expects from this bistro classic. It had good pan time for its final sear with a deep golden and crispy skin. It sat on a stew of cannellini beans with speck. It was OK, a little under seasoned. Aesthetically, the kitchen might do well to cut the speck into larger lardons, providing a proper definition between the beans and the bacon and a proper contrast of flavour and texture. The speck was microscopically diced, which added nothing to the dish.
It’s often the case in France, particularly in the bouchons of Lyon, that bacon lardons in salads and stews are very large, making them a genuine, crunchy, salty, porky contrast to other ingredients.
And another thing (I promise I’ll stop banging on about this in a second), the kitchen properly trimmed the duck leg, cutting through the tendon, so as the meat retreated down the bone as it cooked in its luxurious bath of fat, it pulled away neatly and cleanly from the joint. It’s a small thing, mostly about presentation, but it also means the duck cooks better.
Lobster mac and cheese was $49. It was listed as $39 but the $10 shaved truffle supplement … well you would, wouldn’t you? It was massive and, pleasingly, the chunks of sweet, moist lobster were hefty.
I’m sure it’s happened to you on the rare occasion you order lobster mac and cheese somewhere in WA, the crustacean is so meanly deployed, it starts a table game of hunt the lobster. Cynical stuff. Not at Subiaco Continental. They go large on lobster.
The cheese sauce was flavoured with a reduction stock made from lobster shells. Brilliant. It was, however, too gluggy. It needed to be loosened with more bechamel or more of that stunning crustacea stock. It was egregiously under-seasoned, making it bland, and it had a minimal cheese flavour, meaning it lacked bite and that final cheesy smack in the face. For my money, I’d riff of the cheese and lobster classic – lobster thermidor – and throw a bit of flambéed cognac around as well.
Subsequent to our review lunch, chef told me he’s making the mac and cheese bigger on cheese and better seasoned. Happy days.
Porterhouse with bearnaise was a fine piece of meat. Steaks need to be heavily seasoned before they go on the grill because it aids in forming a crust and most of the salt falls off and through the grill grate anyway. The crust could have been, well, crustier. Finishing salt was needed too. Small cavils. Nice steak. Frites on the side were OK.
The wine list is good.
This large 500-seater opens on Mondays, which is a good thing. In a nod to customer preferences, the kitchen offers all pasta dishes in both entrée and main sizes. Solid move and very welcome.
Subiaco Continental is a breezy, bright, enjoyable space at the heart of downtown Subi, with all the hallmarks of a destination venue. This new addition to the Subiaco dining scene is an emphatic vote of confidence in the burgeoning future of the area as a legit dining and drinking precinct after years of languishing. It will be a success.
14.5/20
Cost: snacks/bar food, $8-$36; starters, $17-$23; pastas (offered in entrée and main sizes), $15-$36; mains, $32-$95; sides, $12-$13.
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