The Gallery located on Waymouth Street has always been a popular function hot spot for South Australian events, and a spot for a drink on their rooftop . Recently we were invited to come and try their new rooftop bar menu, created for a more casual, laidback experience. The space is a great place for after work drinks, or for a light lunch, and can be hired out on Sunday’s and Monday’s.
When we walked onto the rooftop the first thing that hit us were the delightful smells coming from the kitchen. Situated right next to the bar we thought this added to the atmosphere, with the incredible wafting smells and seeing the chef’s do their thing.
We sampled a range of their new dishes starting with one of my favourites the gnocchi. This warm and hearty dish had been oven baked with a mild gorgonzola cheese and spinach. The gnocchi had been cooked perfectly, not too hard, and not too soft. It makes me cry a little bit when I get a dish with completely soft pasta. It had a heavy, cream based sauce, but that is not how you felt after eating it. The addition of the spinach helped to give it that little bit of greenery.
We also tried the squid and as stated on the menu lightly floured, with chilli and lemon. Even though I really enjoyed the flavours in the batter, I think that it was a little more than lightly floured. I personally enjoy my squid with a little extra batter so it was cooked exactly to how I liked it.
The next dish we sampled was the meatballs with house sugo and shaved parmesan. This was another highlight of the afternoon, a extremely authentic combination with sugo just like Nonnas. You could really taste the wine throughout the sauce, which once again shows how authentic the dish really was. The meatballs were pink in the middle and very juicy.
The last of the small dishes we tried was the chorizo with potato and herbs. What I really enjoyed about this dish was the level of saltiness of the chorizo. Chorizo can sometimes be too over bearing and fades out the other flavours in the dish. The combination of sausage and potatoes were fantastic, but the potatoes could have been crispier to enhance the quality and texture of the food.
We ended with two pizzas: funghi – mushrooms, truffle oil, goat’s cheese and rocket and ham- maple cured, fior de latte, mushroom and sage. The best thing about both these pizzas was the quality of the ingredients used. Everything was extremely fresh and authentic. The pizza bases were a little underwhelming; it was almost a Lebanese bread style, very thin but a little too crunchy. There could have also been a little more cheese, and also spread more evenly over the pizzas. In saying this they are a great snack to accompany a beautiful red wine, or any drink from the bar. And on this warm humid day, the menu items we tried went down perfectly with a cold refreshing ale from Moondog Brewing.
The Gallery’s new rooftop menu is designed to be snack style, shared and paired with a drink from their bar. It is a small bar menu, but has some extremely hearty and delicious dishes. Thank you to the team at the Gallery for inviting us along to try their beautiful new menu, and showing us around your impressive function spaces.
Review by Tomika Salerno
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