AUD$73 le diner in Ciel Rouge

It's Bastille Day today, and so Sabine suggested that the lab go to Ciel Rouge, a french restaurant located in Victoria street (near Kings Cross) to celebrate. Well, even though we're not french, but it's an excuse to get together and eat good food! LOL...And the good food comes at a good price too! A 3-course Bastille dinner (excluding beverages) set comes at a whopping AUD$60. It's the most expensive dinner set in my life!

So as I have not been to Ciel Rouge nor Victoria street before, I did my homework on the route to take etc... This my scribbling... I think only I can understand this messy map!!

Anyway, took bus 373 from Randwick and it reached Taylor Square in like 10 minutes!! That's pretty fast - kinda expected it to be like a 20 minutes trip. Anyway, Huifen wasn't there yet, so gotta wait a while for her before going over to Ciel Rouge.

This is the entrance to Ciel Rouge... Reached there at about 5.45pm, and waited for like 30minutes for the others - Charmaine and her bf, Lily and her bf, Sabine to show up. Finally, Dom and his gf, as well as Davide arrived as well... and thus let the feast began!! Anyway, the whole restaurant was like fully booked for customers for the Bastille day - Many customer went into the restaurant but come out minutes later only when they realised it's fully booked! Sabine was quick enough to place a booking!

Ok, the whole restaurant was rather small and cozy, and besides the table candles, is only lighted up by two of this chandeliers. See that even the chandeliers are decorated? Yup, it's a french restaurant, and it's Bastille day! What do you expect?

The Bastille dinner set menu... we only get to choose 1 dish from each category. If only I can order all of them! LOL... All these words looks rather foreign to me...What's Gruyere? What's cornichons? What's Suzette? Oh well, just have to follow my instincts to order.

While waiting for our entree, we were served with bread and butter, and we had some red and white wine as well...

Finally, my entree was Chicken liver pate with red onion confit and cornichons. I was like 'huh? so small a portion?' in my mind. LOL... Anyway, it's eaten with bread, by smearing the chicken liver pate onto the bread. It's extremely delicious, and the taste of chicken liver wasn't very strong which is good. The pate was smooth and rich. It's the most delicious food that one can used to smear on bread to eat. I would have given it a full 5 lobsters stamps if not for the red onion confit and cornichons. The cornichons are sour, which I hate, and the red onion aren't exactly that appealing either. Oh well, 4 lobs stamps for my entree!


Now the main course for me is Silver Dory Meniere served with boulanger potatoes. This dish is absolutely superb - the outer layer of the dory was grilled till golden crisp, but the meat of the fish itself is soft and succulent with the olive oil-based gravy. In addition, they had added a slight tint of lemon/lime juice into the gravy as well. Excellent - not too sour, and goes very well with the fish. And Together with the boulanger potatoes, this is definitely worth 5 lobs stamps, but I'm only giving it 4 lobs stamps as the portion is too small. I could have easily eaten two dory fish portions - but that is going to cost me!



And finally, for the desserts - which is supposedly to wrap up the whole Le diner set, is disappointing. I order a crepe Suzette not knowing what a Suzette is. Apparently after searching through wikipedia, Suzette doesn't have any significance in terms of food. Back to the crepe, it is an orange crepe. I'm not really sure if it's an orange or peach, but based on the sourness and bitter aftertaste of the sauce and crepe, my money is on orange. Anyway, the crepe is nice, nothing spectacular and I would have given it 2.5 lobs stamp. However, I do not like sour food and yet I have to force myself to finish it (it's worth $60!!!) and thus I'm only willing to give it only a lobs stamp instead.

Overall, I find that the food in Ciel Rouge is quite to my liking except that the portions are small, and thus isn't really worth the AUD$60 (including wines - AUD$70+) The price is definitely on the high end, probably capitalising on that fact that french cuisine is generally considered to be a refine and elegant way of dining, and that it's Bastille Day. Well, I guess I'm going to sum up my experiences in Ciel Rouge with just one sentence - I'm going to make myself some noodles later. =)