Gardea House Restaurant

Press, 24 February 1988, Page 26

Gardea House Restaurant

Queen Mary Gardens Hammer Springs Phone 7246

By JENNY FELTHAM Hanmer Springs exudes a velvet serenity, even when peppered with hot tourists. The pools soon take care of over-ener-getic visitors. Whatever one does, it must be leisurely; especially dining out.

Which is how it is at the Garden House Restaurant. Hidden just behind the pools, it is close enough for wrinkled soakers to drag their limpid carcases without undue effort. A stout notice on the front door warns that the restaurant is a totally nonsmoking area. Yippee. It is a pleasure to/eat with-

out fear of conflagrations right, left and centre. Lucky the diners who were ushered into the outer, covered verandah part of the dining room. There the setting sun and dusky twilight had the hallmark of a set for a Zefferelli film on the Empire. Besides, it was slightly warmer than the inner sanctum where we were seated. Thankfully the waitress hurried to shut the front door against draughts, moths and, inadvertently late arrivals. A sad comment on the art of butlering today was the fact that we noticed almost instantly that our waitress was new to the job and probably temporary. She was so nice, so friendly, so careful, so helpful, so efficient, that she could not possibly have been embittered by months of serving every whim and fancy of finickety patrons. Top marks to her from all three generations at our table. Instilled with the "try-anything-once” philosophy, the children dived enthusiastically into the menu. Madeleine, celebrating her eleventh birthday, thought smoked eel ($7.50) was suitably ” festive. Hannah, only 8, was a little more cautious and settled for the fresh fruit cocktail ($6). Things got off to a good start with Madeleine rhapsodising about her eel, which was embedded in lettuce, orange, carrot, tomato and cucumber segments. “Scrummy,” quoth she.

Hannah vowed that her melon and Californian grapefruit cocktail was unsugared, but once a kindly waitress brought sugar to the table, the starter was downed in a flash. Both Martin’s mum and I enjoyed our soup of the day, tomato, at $5, although both our personal tastes would have preferred slightly smoother texture and tangier tomato taste. Redoubtable Martin chose from the fish offerings, which included smoked green-lipped mussels ($6) and shrimp cocktail ($7.50), rollmop herrings at $7.50. The herrings, exactly to his taste, were non-greasy and nonacidic. They were served with the same embellishments as the smoked eel.

The venison terrine ($7.75) and chef’s pate and melba toast ($7.50) were tempting, but there is a limit to how much even our extend-a-stom-achs can eat.

With these, we shared between us some crunchy slices of herb bread and garlic bread ($1 each). The edges were a little over-done, but the flavours were deliciously under-stated. Both Madeleine and Hannah and their grandma had fruit juices of blackcurrant and orange ($1.50), while Martin and I dispatched the contents of a bottle of Giesen’s Muller-Thurgau medium 1987 ($7.30), with approving, and slightly surprised, noises.

It was Hannah who first commented on the rather amazing pastiche of canned music. It swung, with alarming abruptness from light orchestral to quasi-classical, through an Edith Piaf-clone, to jazz, giving a slightly dizzy aural sensation as we switched from one mode to another.

Main courses range from $18.50 for fish of the day, to game dishes as available ($22). Madeleine hearily approved of her roast pork ($l7) while Hannah equally loved her half roast chicken in cream and tarragon sauce ($l7). Both girls chorused yums of. approval and there was little to show that there had ever been food on their plates at the end. Half portions for children are available for all main courses, except the chicken which is already a half.

My baked ribeye in pepper sauce ($18) was hot stuff but, unfortunately, the butchery of the meat was not all that it should have been; too many large chunks of uncuttable gristle and unappetising fat spoilt it for my taste. Martin, too, was disappointed with his venison, which suffered from the same lack of careful attention with a sharp knife. It also was the most “gamey” venison either of us had ever tasted. Martin’s mum found her Canterbury lamb ($l7) delicious. Top marks yet again to the waitress, who remembered to omit the mint .sauce, as requested.

tastes, but the presentation was colourful and adequately attractive.

There was no choice of vegetables (and no salad offered). The selection, called “crisply steamed vegetables” was nuggets of potatoes, cauliflower in a thin white sauce, carrots and broccoli. They could, with the exception of the carrots, have done with more steaming to suit our

Dessert called for a lot of hovering and mindchanging while we mulled over the tempting prospects. Again, as in other areas, these were very reasonably priced, from the ice cream sundaes at $4.50 (gobbled appreciably by Madeleine) to the rest at either $5.50 or $5.75. Two we did not sample (but would have liked to) were a lemon cheesecake, and honey and apricot and chiffon pie. I was enticed by an exoticsounding Humana (presumably a contraction of rum and sultana) which was as huge as it was gorgeous, topped with a rum liqueur, chocolate and cream; Hannah also delighted in a chocolate creation: ice cream with hazelnut and chocolate sauce.

Martin ploughed his way through an equally enormous glass of boysenberry parfait, while his mum was in heaven with her strawberry-topped pavlova.

Five liqueur coffees (including one which appeared disarmingly as grand mariner) at $6.50 each, plus percolated, imported, brandy and whiskey coffee; tea, light ales by the can, or wine cooler by the bottle or glass, are also available.

A lovely touch was the surprise arrival of a birthday sponge cake filled with cream and strawberries, crowned with birthday wishes and candles for Madeleine.

With two adequate coffees (each with complimentary petit fours) the total bill, excluding wine, came to $135.73. The children loved their meal and voted it somewhere around the eight or nine out of 10 mark. We, too, felt that it was good value for money, and that, on the whole, the restaurant has much going for it: its central position and ac-

cessibility (with a ramp leading to the verandah), the no-smoking rule, the top-rate service, and the over-all leisurely atmosphere about the place. Grumbles about the main courses would be fixed quickly by changing butchers and steaming the vegetables a little longer, or in smaller quantities. But all in all, the pros outweigh the cons; it is the ideal place for the average holiday-maker.