Il Locale

Meighan and I had dinner at Il Locale at Haberfield last nite. Although it's pricier that the other restaurants on Ramsey Street, we thought we deserved a treat: I have now finally finished the grad program at work and Meighan has had a very successful month with her new health and fitness regime. I've also been wanting to eat here for a while, as its always buzzing with people at dinner and lunch time whenever I've happened to be driving past.

We ordered the Seafood Platter for One (M) and Spaghetti with Lobster and Broccoli (me).

Here are the results of our amateur gourmet food critiquing:

Seafood Platter for One
What was it:
Octopus, prawns in shell, calamari tube, pippies, mussels and other miscellaneous crayfish (no veggies) with broth served on crusty Italian bread (to soak up the broth from the stew).
How much:
$28
Comments:
The presentation of this meal was very impressive - a very deep white bowl brimming with seafood - prawn antennae, mini octopus tentacles - so it was off to a good start. As described above there was a whole myriad of seafood in there. The seafood and stew, which M was pretty pleased with, was served on top of a couple of slices of crusty Italian bread (at the base of the bowl), to soak up the seafood broth. I sampled a bit of the brothy bread, and it was pretty tasty. M found the meal really filling and didn't finish off all the bread and both at the bottom of the bowl. She thought it was pretty good value too, compared to my meal.
Rating:
Credit - probably a high credit from M's feed back

Spaghetti with Lobster Tail and Broccoli
What was it:
Bowl of spaghetti with half a lobster tail with soft cooked broccoli in a pink cream sauce.
How much:
$25
Comments:
This was my first foray into the world of lobster (believe it or not) and I was totally unimpressed by the tiny half tail. When the menu says "lobster tail", the implication is that you will get a whole tail. Have they not heard about misleading and deceptive conduct? The meat was also a bit dry. As the menu didn't mention anything about the sauce in the description of the meal, I assumed it was a tomato based sauce - I was unpleasantly surprised by the pink cream sauce, which wasn't in the menu's description (I'm not a huge fan of creamy sauces) so that was another no no. The broccoli was a good addition as it cut through the creaminess a bit, but if it had not been so soft cooked and bit crisper, it might have made the meal a bit more interesting.
My mum's pasta kicks ass compared to this meal.
Had they asked me what I thought about the meal (as often happens when they clear up), I would have griped to them. However they didn't, so I didn't.
Rating:
Pass, and I mean bare pass, like 55/100

We spent a fair bit of time eying off everyone else's meals (in their defence, everything smelled great), and as the fish and meat mains looked pretty impressive, as did the pizzas, we came to the conclusion that maybe these people just don't do pasta very well. However, this SMH review, makes me think the whole menu might be a bit hit and miss.

Desserts were all around the $12 mark, which I think is a bit much, particularly as you can just go across the road, as we did (to Dolcissimo) and get some great desserts for a lot less.

Would I go there again? Probably not.