OnSong wrote:Anyone read the blistering review in the Saturday Tiser? Can't remember what the restaurant was but it was a relatively new joint in the city. Copped both barrels.
Here 'tis for non-Murdoch subscribers:
LET’S start with a quiz. See if you can pick which of the following is not really dished up at the convoluted, misguided bar and eatery, 2nd & 6th.
(1) Savoury mojito tart with smoked salmon and lime gel. (2) Oriental prawns with avocado, goat’s cheese and coconut caviar. (3) Moroccan duck breast, stuffed with date and coated in Chinese five-spice powder.
The answer, depressingly, is that all these culinary Frankensteins are part of a menu that reads like it was developed by pulling ingredients and styles from a hat. Or in a children’s game like the one in which heads, bodies and legs from different characters are shuffled into comical combinations.
But that’s only part of the confusion. The name 2nd & 6th is a reference to the second and sixth of the seven deadly sins, greed and gluttony, which would have fitted better with the owner’s original concept of specialising in indulgent desserts.
It may have also inspired the bizarre art concept in which portraits of European aristocracy, some graffitied with mysterious scrawled outlines, are interspersed with a graphic of a horned demon on a darkened glass panel.
Tables are spread over two levels, upstairs on a landing opposite the kitchen, and downstairs around the bar. Our night starts here, in a thoroughfare near the front door, where a large plastic bin passes by on more than one occasion en route to parts unknown.
It’s hot and we’re thirsty. A young, inked up barman/waiter, whose reserves of self-assurance seem inexhaustible, recommends a “smashable” beer and a cocktail of rum and campari, which seems expensive ($20) even with the marigold bloom in a little ice bowl that is plonked on top.
Orders are placed and the wait begins.
Twenty or so minutes in comes an explanation. There has been an “avocado crisis”. The ones that turned up weren’t good enough. Replacements have been called for. At 7pm.
The avocado, as it happens, is easily the highlight on a plate of lightly spiced prawns that have the bland flavour and soft texture typically found in an imported product. Six of them, tails attached, are propped up on a plinth of the avocado with a sprig of ice plant. Carefully arranged around this centrepiece are ... rings of red onion, crackers with an inlaid coriander leaf, blobs of whipped goat’s cheese and tiny spheres of “coconut caviar” that look like the foam balls from a bean bag and have about as much taste. So much effort, so little reward.
The thinking behind the salmon is just as muddled. Yes, the slices of fish, if lightly cured, might have gone with the strange, quiche-like tart on which they are draped and the succulent pieces of karkalla plant. But lurking to the side is a puddle of a painfully intense lime syrup that obliterates everything in its path. Just bizarre.
Three “lobster tails” — not our local southern rock lobster — are surprisingly big and meaty given the price ($36 for three), coated in some sort of sweet chilli glaze and pan-fried perfectly. But why they are matched with a salad of shredded fennel is as big a mystery as how all the lovely anise flavour of the veg has been somehow drained away.
About now a new waitress pops by and asks if we’d like to start a tab, even though we’ve been eating and drinking for an hour or so. Oh, and the aircon goes on the blink so we shift upstairs where it is cool.
Slices of “Moroccan” duck breast are nicely moist and pink but stuffed with an overly sweet date filling. Wok-fried veg (very Moroccan that!) are okay but a bitter reduction sauce tasting strongly of five spice powder is just horrible. Rubbery-textured pork belly comes with pork scratchings and lumpy mashed potato imbued with so much acrid smoke I find it inedible.
Desserts show the same dedication to showy, fashion-conscious concepts over all else. “Peach melba” fails mostly because the slices of stone fruit are pale and taste of absolute nothing. Nada. All the panna cotta (too solid), ice cream and raspberry trickery don’t go close to making up for that.
The Fringe has kicked off, giving Adelaide its annual dose of the weird and occasionally not-so-wonderful. But as a total package — the theme, the setting, the service and most of all the food — 2nd & 6th might just take the cake. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
