Garum — Restaurant in Perth

My wife and I booked dinner at Garum while staying at the Westin Hotel. The restaurant itself looks fantastic and the staff were extremely polite upon entry all saying Buona sera (good evening in Italian). Unfortunately it’s was all down hill from there. I rarely order pasta at an Italian restaurant, mainly because I’m Italian and have my Italian wife, mother and grandmother that are superstar cooks, however if it’s a little different or a restaurant that’s renowned for its pasta I’ll usually order it, especially in this case as I was planning on having pasta for entree then the porchetta for main. We ordered 2 glasses of wine which were really impressive and admittedly not too pricey. I ordered a Fettuccine Carbonara and my wife the Spaghetti alla Chitarra. What a disappointment they both were, by far the worst two pasta dishes I’ve ever eaten and that’s the honest truth. The Carbonara literally tasted like I was eating boiled Fettuccine with nothing else added to them, I will say they weren’t over cooked they were perfect, just tasteless. It was rather busy by then and trying to flag down staff for some cheese to at least add some sort of flavour took way too long. My wife’s spaghetti alla chitarra was much the same, no flavour and extremely dry because of the crumbs. We sat there for quite a while with empty wine glasses, the wine was damn good and I really wanted another one, when I finally managed to call a waitress that was seating some people next to our table to order the wine it then took 17 minutes to get it, at this stage nobody bothered to ask us if we wanted a main. I was really hanging out for the porchetta but due to us both being so disappointed we decided to ask for the bill and leave, sadly this also took a while so we just got up and flagged down a waitress. Staff are extremely pleasant, the place looks great and the wine list is decent, but for a restaurant apparently owned by a well known food critique that can’t even cook a decent carbonara, which no disrespect really isn’t very difficult at all, someone needs to assess the standard of the meals being served to paying patrons. We were there by 6pm too and ordered shortly after so I think it’d be fair to say that the chef’s would’ve been far from busy at the time we ordered. Sorry Garum but we won’t be coming...

We arrived without a reservation after our original dinner plans fell through, and we were very grateful that the team was able to accommodate us so warmly. The entry area did feel a little more like an office space than a guest entrance, with some administrative items visible, but we were quickly greeted and shown to our table. The restaurant was lively, and while the energy was great, the high ceilings made it quite noisy at times, which made conversation a little difficult. The wait staff were absolutely wonderful — friendly, attentive, and genuinely caring, which we truly appreciated. Their service was one of the highlights of our evening. The aromas as we entered were beautiful and gave us high hopes for the meal ahead. We ordered the olives, oysters with wine and shallot, scallops, veal tongue in tuna sauce with grapefruit, eye fillet, and fettuccine. Of these, the olives and the steak on its own were enjoyable. Unfortunately, the accompanying sauces and sides didn’t quite meet our expectations, and some dishes felt a little unbalanced in flavour. The veal tongue sounded intriguing but was quite mild, and the grapefruit seemed to overpower the other elements. The fettuccine sauce in particular wasn’t to our taste. Overall, we found the menu a bit hard to connect with — some flavour combinations left us puzzled, and we wondered if perhaps they simply didn’t align with our palate. Given the setting and pricing, we were hoping for a bit more refinement in the dishes themselves. When our waitress noticed that we hadn’t finished the pasta, she kindly asked about it. We explained that it wasn’t to our taste, and she graciously removed it from the bill — a gesture we didn’t expect but truly appreciated. I don’t enjoy leaving negative feedback, but our experience fell below what we anticipated, especially considering the otherwise lovely atmosphere and excellent service. I hope the kitchen team might revisit some of the dishes, as the concept and presentation hold great potential. The two stars I’ve given are entirely for the warmth and professionalism of the staff — thank you for looking...

Set Menu Not Worth It. Got the $95 3 course set menu and I don’t think it was worth the money. The bread they give you is delicious so that was a good start and the entrees were decent. If you select the cold cuts you get quite a generous serving of prosciutto, salami and coppa with pickles and really good grissini. The carrots were another option and quite tasty, a vegetarian would be very happy with them I feel. The carpaccio looked nice on the plate, I didn’t taste it but those that I was with said it was okay. The mains is where things were a little off. The pasta with the pork ragu was undercooked, a bit hard - not quite al dente and the ragu was a fairly simple bolognase. The lamb had good flavour but was a bit tough. The roast potatoes they sent to the table were really awful. They tasted like someone microwaved some left overs from a few days before. Not enough salt on them, no crispiness, just kind of dry and flavourless. Most of us got the tiramisu for dessert which honestly just tasted like the kind of pre-packaged tiramisu you might get at a supermarket, the ladyfinger biscuits were on the hard/dry side as it had clearly not been left long enough for them to soak up all the coffee and marscapone. They would be better if they were made the day before and left overnight but the waiter said they make them that day. A friend got the cheese board which had a generous serving of cheese 4 or 5 cheeses but basically all of them except the blue cheese were variations of hard parmigiano or pecorino. There’s only so much hard italian cheese you can really eat, more variety and some soft cheeses and milder cheeses would have been better. I feel as though you could go elsewhere to another fairly high end italian restaurant and pay $20 for an entree, $35 for a main and $15 for a dessert and that would only set you back $70. In fact i just checked the a la carte menu at Garum itself and if we had ordered the prosciutto, pasta and tiramisu off the menu it would only cost $64…… we each paid $95. Feeling absolutely...