Monday, January 4, 2010

Birthday Dinner at Soul Bar & Bistro, Auckland

My friend celebrated my birthday during my visit in Auckland. I was brought to Soul for my birthday dinner. From about 10 minutes walking distance from The Westin, we arrived at Soul.

Soul is situated in the heart of Auckland's Viaduct Harbour.If you choose to dine or drink at the restaurant's terrace, you can enjoy the nice sunset and harbour view.


Soul Bar & Bistro

As that day was quite chilly, we decided to dine indoor instead. As we entered the entrance, we were politely greeted by the waiter and seated us at a corner of the restaurant. Then we were given drinks menu, food menu and today's special menu for our decision making.


Today's special menu

Before decided on what to have for dinner, we ordered a bottle of Te Waihou Sparkling water to quench our thirst first. Te Waihou is a local brand with local colloquial language which means "The New Water". The water is sourced from the Blue Spring in New Zealand. We do think that the subtle crisp bubbles from Te Waihou Reserve Sparkling Water provides a well balance and clean taste before starting a meal.

Then we started off the birthday meal with ciabatta with Soul's bessara as the entree for dinner. The skin of ciabatta was crispy and the inner texture was chewy. It's a new type of bread that I had tasted. It is totally different from the normal bread that I had so far.


Ciabatta with Soul's bessara

Also, we ordered a glass of Pelorus Bay Methode Tradionede each to go with our main meals.

I had Hawkes Bay lamb rack with cheesy potato terrine, braised cos and broad beans as my main meal. When I placed my order, the waiter actually did asked me whether I'm okay with rare lamb rack. In fact, I told them I prefer it to be medium. Personally I had only tried well done lamb before, hence I'm not too ready with rare or medium lamb. However this time I gave it a try. When the lamb rack arrived, it looks very rare as you can see the meat was still red. (You'll know what I meant when you see the photo below) I didn't asked the waiter to take it away for a change. In my mind I was like it's okay try that out. It turned out that rare looked lamb rack was just right. The juiciness and tenderness of the meat was just right but the rest of it was rather ordinary. My friend can't figure out why this meal comes with the broad beans combination. I, myself personally don't like the broad beans because it were tasteless.


Hawke Bays lamb rack with cheesy potato terrine, braised cos and broad beans

My friend had slow cooked pork belly with braised shoulder croquette and pimento mustard mash as his main meal. As according to him, the crackling were not crispy enough as per his liking. Overall it taste rather ordinary than expected.


Slow cooked pork belly with braised shoulder croquette and pimento mustard mash

We also had the mixed green salad as our sides as we prefer to have some vegetables as well to balance our diet.


Mixed green salad

When we were done with our meals, as usual, we were ready for desserts. It took us about 10 to 15 minutes to finally decides on pallete of fruit sorbets. The pallete of fruit sorbets come in six different varieties of flavours. We weren't being told what were the flavours, hence we did our best to give a guess. We managed to get most of it right except one which was rather special, the apple + corriander flavour. After trying all the rest, we decided to ask the waiter on the flavours presented to ensure our answers were right. The flavours served that night were (from top left corner clockwise):-

  • Strawberry


  • Yogurt


  • Tamarillo


  • Orange


  • Boysenberry


  • Apple + corriander


Pallete of fruit sorbets

The overall experience in Soul was rather ordinary. We were rather dissapointed with the food as we expected more due to the good and positive reviews.

Although it was a rather ordinary birthday dinner without a birthday cake, it's the thought that counts. Thanks. (I know you are reading this)

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