I won't bore you with the history. You can read that yourself at http://www.societyrestaurant.com. Bottom line - The Society was around when my dad first came to Australia many years ago. Then it disappeared for a while and now it's back in an updated form.
They've tried to capture the Italian restaurant feel that is a little bit cliched (chandeliers, mirrors, random Italian images and writing on the wall) and they've done it really well.
Overall the food is great. The night I was there we had entrees mains and dessert:
Entrees:
Eggplant Parmigiana - fantastic. Delicious layers of eggplant, tomato & buffalo mozzarella. Great napoli sauce over the top. Hints of fresh basil.
Twice cooked duck - served layered with delicate flaky pastry, this was an absolute delight.
Mains:
Gnocchi with a rich beef ragu hinted with white truffle oil. Delicate. Delicious. The actual gnocchi were good (not as good as the bar at Florentinos but the sauce was MUCH better). Just enough truffle flavour from the oil and the ragu was rich and flavoursome.
Pan seared pork rib eye served on the bone with a "just sweet enough" orange glaze. The apple cider jelly was well presented but had no real flavour - if you can't taste it what's the point??
Sides - rocket salad and some hand cut chips. All good.
Dessert
What a disaster. Chocolate ravioli that were tough and actually tasted pretty ordinary. Almost (but not quite) saved by the vanilla bean custard filling which was nice. I'm sure this sounded like a good idea when someone said, "hey how about some chocolate ravioli?", but overall this was actually quite bad.
Coffee - short black. Not my favourite brand of coffee (Dimattina) but ended the meal well.
We drank a couple of glasses of prosecco and pinot grigio - both from the north of Italy and both great.
Service was also very good. Attentive enough without being over-bearing even if our young waitress had a bit of trouble remembering the specials. They did make us feel very welcome in typical Italian fashion and I'd definitely go back.
At $160 for 2 people it was pretty good value for what you got. They also kept an eye on my illegally parked car for me.
If you want a good night out, reasonably priced with a nice touch of Italy - this is the place. Just pick carefully when you get to dessert.
Eat well!
Fingers
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