Sails on the Waterfront

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
Nab a table on the windowed balcony of this upstairs hotel restaurant, and the views over the busy marina on a glistening summer day are delightful. Inside there’s a bit more of a pub feel – spruced, polished and moderately gentrified as many pub dining rooms are these days thanks to the dollars rolling in from those machines. The view is of families, couples and groups tucking into some of the 1800 to 3000 meals the kitchen serves each week. To say the place buzzes is an understatement, especially on weekends when it’s good to see the family out-for-Sunday-lunch thing is still alive and well.

The menu runs through old comfortable familiars like oysters Kilpatrick, crumbed and deep fried mushrooms and camembert, chicken Caesar, schnitzel burgers, steak sandwiches, beer battered fish, a 300g Scotch fillet and mostly frozen scallops, prawns and calamari in various guises including with tagliatelle in a creamy, well-flavoured Napoli sauce and the predictable seafood basket. Overall, nothing to really complain or get excited about. The diners look happy enough, the service is fast and impersonal, the beers keep flowing and those 1800 to 3000 meals a week tell their own story.

Graeme Phillips