A trip to a 'restaurant'

Because I've grown up mostly eating at Asian restaurants, I've come to define the term restaurant as those western style restaurants with fancy decor (preferabbly with dim lighting at night....haha), fancy waiters/waitresses, fancy plating(you know, big plates, little food)..... and most importantly, a 3 course menu. But sadly, I've never been to one of these restaurants.

This weekend, we visited Atrium Brasserie, a small 'restaurant' - not quite the restaurant I was thinking of (as it lacked the .....err fanciness- and was actually just a club restuarant). It did, however, have the 3 course menu- and at the price of $15. So the main was only fish and chips. But still. It was close enough. And it had a good view!

So the reason we went to this particular 'restaurant'? My mum had come here once with her friends, and apparently they had a really good soup that she wanted us to try. Unfortunately, when we got there, we realised that there was no soup on the menu- only the soup of the day. The service was slow, but we eventually got taken to a seat and given a menu- to order, you tick off the boxes on a sheet of paper and pay at a counter. Going for the cheaper option, we chose the 3 course meal, along with the salad bar and steak .

Salad - $7 (with meal)

We weren't going to get the salad but then we were scared there wasn't enough to eat. Besides- it looked fun! Because of $7, they give you a small bowl, and you can fill it up with as much salad as you like (but only once). There was a wide range of choices- some pre made salads and some vegetables with a variety of salad dressings you could add yourself. I quite liked the salads, but I haven't had many salads before so I wouldn't know if they're good compared to other places. However, I'm sure it would have tasted better if the salads were separate rather than all mixed together though. We tried to pack as much in as possible, but we still had to take it back to the table so this is how much we got- there were others who stacked it much higher than ours!

The cauliflower soup came shortly- which was the soup of the day (it came with our meal) . It was just your ordinary creamy soup lumps of cauliflower, which looked like potatoes (it took a while for us to figure out that it was actually cauliflower) and a slight cauliflower taste.

Fish and Chips

The mains took a while to come- being freshly fried, the chips and the fish were very crispy. They weren't the best fish and chips I've ever had though.....

Chargrilled Scotch Fillet- $19

I think this was supposed to be a lunch special as it's not on the menu. We really should have gotten it medium rare but my mum was scared that medium rare wouldn't be cooked enough for us kids. It definitely wasn't the best steak we've had- it was, well....pretty ordinary -I'd prefer the steak which my mum cooks at home.

The last course of the meal was ice cream. We were sitting around for quite a while after we'd finished out meal, wondering when the dessert was going to come- it never did. Because the dessert doesn't come to you- you have to get it yourself! They really should have told us at some point!

So we took out reciept to the drinks area and asked for our ice cream- we got to choose the flavours, which I had no idea what they were so I just asked for one of each flavour (there was also strawberry, but it didn't look too appealing). The chocolate was already half melted. The other two flavours were some kind of nut flavours- probably almond and hazlenut. Other than that, the ice cream wasn't too bad- it tasted notably better than supermarket ice cream (the cheap ones that is) but that's no surprise as this is a 'restaurant'!

Atrium Brasserie
14 Magdala Rd
North Ryde NSW 2113