Gaea — Restaurant in Melbourne

ORDERED: 🍽 Degustation: 11 courses ($175.00pp) 🍄 1 truffle dish ($25.00) 🍵 1 tea each

REVIEW: 💬 Gaea was an interesting experience. Some of the food was delicious and intricate, while other flavours were a chaotic jumble. What was memorable was the new dining experience, the beautiful moody interior and the beautiful handcrafted butter knife & the utensils rest.

✅ My favourite foods of the night: Crocodile tart. Wafer thin, snappy tart with green onion and shaved cheese. This was fun, savoury and a great little bite. I wish there was more than one. 🤩 Jerusalem Artichoke, kangaroo & aged cheddar. Similar concept to the crocodile tart, the savoury cheddar really kicked this into the next gear. There was interesting colour, an abundance of flavour and coated my mouth with such joy. I really liked this! Yuzu milk. This was a refreshing, fruity feeling (palate cleanser) which I wish was so good that I wish we ended on it. The dessert after was the hidden villain (in my least favourite). You could tell I particularly enjoyed the focus on native Australian produce. 🤣

❌ Least favourite was: Pumpkin, chestnut and grape. This was a hearty dessert, which is something I never thought I'd say. The pumpkin gives it an unpleasant savoury tone, the nuttiness an unwelcome guest while I felt like the grapes added little to nothing at all. Unsure what the concept was, but I this did not suit my tastes at all. BIG avoid.

💍 Service was professional, served by an immaculately accessorised gentlemen with great taste in rings. He was swift with ensuring our dishes kept going and introduced all the dishes with familiarity. 🕯 The interior is moody with its dark lights and wooden tones. The atmosphere was driven by employees there to do their job and then escort you out once you finished eating. There was no real 'experience' that I normally associate with fine dining which was a shame. It was pure...

This restaurant maybe have some misunderstanding with the definition of FINE DINNING

$500, I expected more than this. Maybe due to lockdown the service and food quality have dropped significantly.

Food material is surprisingly cheap. Cabbage is one of their course. When the waiter presented it to us me and my friends just looked at each other speechless.

Two desserts with both ice cream, I have been so many fine dinning restaurant, its my 1st time to see gave customer ice cream twice. One coconut and caramel, I just felt its careless.

The Caucasian waiter is very rude had no proper manner of service. My wine is only as half as what he poured for the customer next to us. I gave him another chance, ordered 2nd glass, still the same only half of the amount, its absolutely not 150ML.

The Caucasian waiter had no greeting to us. During the whole dining experience, he went to other table to ask customers how's the food, wine etc, but never asked us.

The Caucasian waiter took the plate away without saying or asking can he take? I was still talking to my friend, this is so rude! It's not a 15 dollars fast food restaurant, this waiter is just not properly trained.

-The Asian waiter is nice and polite

My 1st experience back to Feb was wonderful. But this time is...

Gaea certainly requires more fanfare than it has and is punching above its weight.

The food is exceptional. Pretty much every dish is a winner. Highlight was the pine mushrooms, steak & artichoke and the jasmine tea dessert. Other than the crab dish (it was a bit too floral for me) every dish was honestly amazing.

Wine and sake matching was extremely well executed and very interesting. It is the first time I’ve seen a wine and sake matching at a fine dining restaurant. Whilst I am not a sake fan, I stepped away from the night feeling I had learned something new and really appreciated the carefully chosen pairings.

The head chef is clearly very passionate and creative. Changing his menu every 4 weeks, continuously innovating and challenging himself and the team. Everything is made in house and zero waste.

The restaurant is small and intimate, and it feels like you’re almost at a private dining with the head chef and somm serving you directly through the night.

I was lucky enough to get a spoiler alert into the pre-dessert for the next iteration of the menu, and it was delicious. I won’t spoil it here, but I will definitely be back to try the next menu and every menu going forward.

Well done to the team at...