The North Room — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

Ambience: 10/10 Service: 10/10 Cannot fault the staff at all, they were attentive and had dedication in introducing every dish, it was a very pleasant dining experience.

The menu is so well priced for something like $60-70 only for 5 plates with complimentary starter. Really good date night venue or place to take a workmate.

Our starter, the chicken skin and other dip on bread was delicious. We also opted for the German pretzels- they were so YUM. Dense and hot on the inside, just perfect with the umami house made cultured butter they had.

Then we received the lobster with chokos and curry leaf in like a sauce or something (the taste was very strong, it’s like if you mashed up curry leaves like a pesto?? Really dunno why anyone thought this would taste good) under the lobster. Really not impressed with this dish sorry.. the flavour combination was odd. I mean I have a curry leaf tree and cook with it in curries quite often so am familiar with the taste, but I just found the flavour overpowering and overwhelming served in this way. It completely washed out the lobster- could have been prawn or bug under there and it wouldn’t have mattered as you can’t taste anything but the curry leaf. 1/10.

Mud crab, bone marrow crumpet, cultured cream, salted egg yolk - I was so excited for this dish as everything about this dish sounded like it should be AMAZING. The waitress hyped it up and as someone who likes to assault their tongue with umami, I was pumped. Tbh It wasn’t bad (imo) but my partner was not a fan- described it as too many things going on at once. For me, it was more like they took 10/10 flavourbomb ingredients that hit your umami tastebuds and make them go WAHHH and turned them down to a 3/10 level of intensity- so combined as a dish it hits you like a 5/10. You’re too busy trying to taste the bone marrow in the crumpet that you miss the crab and then in the end all you end up tasting is the residual salted egg shavings on the plate. Neither underwhelming or overwhelming? I feel like this dish has a lot of potential and it’s just not fully brought out yet Idk. 5/10.

Veal sweetbreads, pumpkin, pine mushrooms - ok this one should be ordered. It’s done REALLY well. The veal was tender and went so well with the pine mushrooms (which add their own element to the dish- I find pine mushrooms particularly fragrant). It was all nicely tied up with the pumpkin. This one came as a recommendation from the waitress and I’m so glad she told us about it. 10/10.

Pork Jowl, apple sauce - this was yummy but so heavy and oily we both agreed that it would have been good to have more apple baby food thing on the side. This dish took me back to my artery clogged days in Germany scoffing down fatty pork and sausages with apple sauce and sauerkraut- delicious on the tongue for the first few bites then you start to feel nauseous once all the fat hits you at once like POW. 6/10.

Lastly we had the lamb dish with black garlic and legit the most delicious salad on the side. Honestly I forgot what it was as I accidentally deleted the photo of this dish but wowZERS I could eat that salad for days- it should be a mainstay not a seasonal choice for this dish. Lamb was well cooked from memory. 8/10.

I just want to finish off by saying that if you’re considering eating here you should go anyways to check it out for yourself. The dining experience itself was great and although I wasn’t a fan of enough of the food to want to go back, that’s just me and my tastebuds. They also apparently change their menu items quite seasonally so if it’s quite different I’d be open to trying this joint again. All in all I think the balance was off in some of the dishes we selected (the lobster dish too experimental, the mud crab dish too busy that it became mediocre, pork jowl too heavy) but we still enjoyed our dinner.

I’d still recommend this place to a friend and would honestly only bother mentioning what’s been written in this review to friends with fussy tongues who go for...

I was very much looking forward to the meal after reading the glowing reviews from everyone. However unfortunately the meal was a disappointment which was disappointing nonetheless to me as it had so much potential. The ingredients are excellent. Service in short wasn't very attentive (though they did check in), this was surprising due to the small number of tables in the restaurant.

We started with the pretzel bread with cultured butter which was definitely quite nice and a great complement to each other. Our first nice surprise was the chicken skin (pictured) which definitely was nice and crisp and well seasoned.

We continued onward with the tasting menu which was recommended by our server.

Our first course was the Fingal Head Pipis, Pomelo, black radish and smoked yogurt. The dish had much potential but required more Pomelo to balance out the yogurt was I felt the dish was overly salty just from also being over-seasoned.

Our second course was the Spanner Crab, bone marrow crumpet, cultured cream, salted egg which would have definitely been a great dish had it not been way to heavily spiced with chili. I'm from Asia where we have many dishes which are hugely spiced but the cultured cream with chili way overpowered what would have been a great dish.

Our third dish was the Brooklet Spring Chicken, Onion, Zucchini, Oats was amazing and definitely one of the best chicken dishes I've had before. It was nicely balanced with pickled onions that balanced out the fatty moistness of the chicken. The nutty flavour from the oats certainly brought the dish together. Definitely one of the highlights of the meal.

The fourth course was the fish of the day, with tomatillo, broad bean and jiacama. Unfortunately the puree below the dish completely overpowered the fish and I could definitely taste the fish was very fresh but the sweet puree made it impossible to taste anything else. For me I felt the ingredients didn't really come together as a dish.

The fifth course was the Pork Jowl, Blood Orange, Jerusalem artichoke, leek and peanut. It was well balanced like the third and my personal favorite as it was decadent but the blood orange really brought home the dish.

The final part were the salted caramels which were served at the end. In short they were great and a nice end to the dish.

All in all the meal as described previously had so much potential and with some tuning could have been excellent. Unfortunately it felt marred by a couple of mistakes that ruined the taste. Along with service that at times was quite inattentive it made the experience less than what was expected for the price.

One minor edit I wanted to add that I missed out was that the ambiance was quite ruined by the use of a UE Boom Bluetooth maxxed out to try and fill a whole room. By the end of the night it was giving a bit of a headache from the treble of the speaker.

This meant knocking half a star for the inattentiveness, 1 star for the lows of the food, 1 star for the atmosphere. Adding half a star for the highlights including the Chicken and the Pork Jowl which are amazing dishes (and nice start and end to the meal). Therefore...

My wife and I dined here last evening. Overall, we were disappointed with the food. In our opinion, the flavour combinations did not work. We feel compelled to leave this feedback as the overall reviews are so fantastic. Maybe it was not a great night. We really were hoping for a fine dining experience as it was a special occasion. The opening complimentary appetisers looked very good but lacked taste to get things going. The cultured butter was supposed to have a pronounced butter flavor, a creamier texture than ordinary butter and a slight tang. It did not have these charctersistics. The spanner crab dish with crumpet and bone marrow, salted egg lacked any crab flavour. I was told that the "hero" was the bone marrow on crumpet. Then why does the menu clearly give the crab first billing?? Why put crab in at all? The salt tended to dominate. The octopus dish was overall ok but was from a baby octopus. Pieces were small, a little mushy and had an overall flavour tending towards red wine vinegar. I was expecting something larger, maybe sear marks and firmer. The pork jowl dish was the best of the night, a real star. Perfectly cooked, gelatinous and melt in mouth. The final beef dish was a real disappointment. The sprout salad was dry (notwithstanding the ample tahini or like dressing) and tasteless. The vegetable covering the beef was raw, tasteless and quite firm. The pine mushroom had little flavour and did not look anything like the golden colour it should have been. The beef was tenderised but lacked taste. We finished with a complementary desert taster. The service was excellent but for $280 (includes 4 glasses of the less expensive white wine) we expected the food to have been much more impressive. In our humble opinion the menu needs to be reworked and please, less sauce. PS: owner ask for positive views to come here and other opinions to go...