Fifteen - lunch special
(enter through Georges Parade)
Ph 1300 799 415
It has been almost a year since Fifteen Melbourne opened its doors, and I thought it high time I went back to see just how this little venture was going. I had noticed some heavy advertising in the newspapers of late, promoting a lunchtime special of two courses and a glass of wine for $28.50. So with EG and six work mates in tow, I made a booking for the following week (hmm…looks like one doesn’t need to wait on the reservation line for 40 minutes or for a reservation months in advance anymore).
I first went to Fifteen back in October 2006, and whilst I found the food satisfying, I did feel the prices were just a little too high. Eleven months on and you will still find Aesop products in the bathroom, and the prices certainly haven’t dropped. The bread is good (you get a choice of four types which they offered twice) with really grassy peppery olive oil for dipping. Front of house is still very professional, though I must admit we had a rather funky (in a bad sense of the word) smelling waiter, who emitted a foul stench whenever he lent over to deposit a plate or fill up the water glass. Eww. But let’s just leave that one there.
The lunch special offers two courses from a reduced choice menu, two each of entree, pasta or dessert.
A couple of my workmates ordered the Rotolo of ricotta with a sage and burnt butter sauce (above). Looks good, huh? Tender sheets of fresh pasta had been rolled with seasoned ricotta and garnished with crispy sage and shavings of parmesan. It probably was a little heavy on the beurre noisette though, which made for a very rich dish.
Most of the group went the milk fed veal osso bucco ravioli with marrow, creamy borlotti beans and braising liquor. Despite the fact that this dish was seriously tasty, all was not well. The inside of the ravioli was good - packed full of shreds of slow cooked osso bucco meat and creamy marrow. The braising liquor (sauce) was also good, marrying well with the firm borlotti beans(cooked from the dried, not the fresh) and having the taste of a good bean minestra. But the downfall? Well…the pasta was not cooked. WHAT THE? Thats right, the pasta was absolutely raw at the seal where the two layers of pasta came together. It wasn’t even raw in a nice way (ie. when you use freshly made pasta). It was inedibly hard and floury, the layer of uncooked pasta plain to the eye.
I/we should have sent it back straight away, but at this stage we had already been sitting there for forty-five minutes and a work lunch hour ticks by way too fast. I ate the filling, the beans, and left the rim of the ravioli as evidence.
Okay now I reckon this is pretty poor, especially as Fifteen Melbourne boasts an Italian Mediterranean style. Pasta should be the one thing they are getting bang on right.
We showed this to the waiter and watched as he passed it on to the kitchen/chef. Unfortunately the advice wasn’t heeded, as one of our party, who had ordered an entree first, received his ravioli about fifteen minutes later. And that one too was raw! We complained to the waiter again and he apologised and offered free coffees in compensation.
Dessert too was a little hit and miss. The hot sticky fig pudding with butterscotch and mascarpone was a popular choice on the table - it was moist, caramelly and nicely plated with a quenelle of mascarpone sitting in a brandy snap curl.
The baked custard and prune tart with walnut icecream was a bit of a miss though. To start with the pastry wasn’t cooked and the filling (what there was of it) was bland and uninspiring. The scrape of prune puree wasn’t enough to impart any flavour at all, and it just looked limp and insipid on the plate.
We really didn’t have time to hang around for our free coffee (we’d been there an hour and a half already), so we bid Fifteen adieu.
Now I love what Fifteen are all about - giving disadvantaged kids the opportunity of acquiring a trade etc. But I also expect value for money - and whilst the venue, the service, the ingredients etc. were all great (…and worth what I paid), damn, they just lost it in the execution. I hope they lift their game.
Written by mellie on
August 26th, 2007 | Tags: restaurants | Category: Uncategorized
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August 26th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Agree full heartedly with your review (and I should post mine…) - that Fifteen’s food just isn’t up to par with the name it boasts. I first went there when it first open - 2nd day in fact (forgot the exact date) but unfortunately I was pretty sick so I didn’t really enjoy the experience (and we couldn’t cancel or postpone because my friend’s credit card would be charged otherwise) but from what I remember, the food was so-so.
Went back there again for the lunch special thing a couple of months back - and we had a rabbit risotto that was ALSO undercooked. Not as bad as yours to be totally uncooked but we can really taste the hard bits of rice. Dessert - a chocolate tart, was rather good though. Service was quite blah - waiter was polite but obviously inexperienced and inattentive.
And yes, I think the bread was probably the best part of our meal. D:
August 26th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Another great review - I really like the way that you can give a positive note to a review that is essentially negative (or at least NOT positive). I think it’s a great skill, and one I wish I had.
It seems that for you Fifteen is one strike away from what I call my “three-strikes-you’re-out” policy - if I go to a place three times and it’s still disappointing, I avoid it forevermore. That is of course assuming you bother with that third visit.
I agree - very disappointing that the execution is left wanting, particularly for the amount of money they ask. I will admit, I haven’t been, but have seen quite a few reviews of the place now, and all have said much the same thing. Which means I will probably give it a miss altogether.
August 27th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Agreed. This seems to be a common theme with this restaurant. Only the Oliver hype keeps it open. Otherwise its near neighbours (Il Solito Posto, Comme, Italy 1) would crush it.
Never again for me.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Seems that you are not the only one who felt that way..
Quite a shame isnt it. Especially with all the hype of Jamie Oliver in the first place that kept the reservation book full for months ahead.
August 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Hey there mouse - I would be very interested to hear your review. Blog it soon, okay? But it looks like we aren’t the only one having reservations.
Hi anna - I must admit that I do feel a little anxious when writing a less than glowing review. I do try to temper it with the good though, which hopefully doesn’t read like a backhanded compliment. I would like to think that should they ever read my thoughts that they take them on board, as Fifteen certainly has a lot going for it - great location, amazing produce, funky interior, good floor staff and an interesting and altruistic concept. They just lost it at the pass and in providing value for money (which is not necessarily cheaper) dining. There are much better places in Melbourne where I can spend my hard earned dollars.
Hi ken - you are bang on right. And I fear that once the Oliver hype dies down, so will Fifteen.
Hey there ginger - yes, a few others have posted somewhat mediocre reports too. It is unfortunately a very common theme. Perhaps they are just in a fug due to the administration of finding the next lot of new apprentices? Hmm.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:12 am
I still havent had a chance to get to Fifteen yet… And despite the mixed reviews you see everywhere, I think this is one place you have to go to, to make your own decision about.
Hmmm… Wonder if our Xmas Party budget extends far enough for Fifteen??
August 28th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Another great review Mellie. I wonder if they are freezing their ravioli parcels so that they can pull them out of the freezer when they need and cook them. Maybe then they just cook it straight away and it doesn’t cook fully. I’m just guessing here, I have no idea. You wouldn’t think it would take that long to cook the pasta through totally.
I so understand about the lunch hour thing. Some restaurants we go to, the food takes like 45 minutes to arrive, so factoring the 15 minutes it takes to get there, this mean we have exactly 0 minutes to eat the food, pay and get back to work. The worse place took a whole hour for the food to arrive when we were one of two tables occupied, huh? Hence nowadays we always say that we’re on a lunch break and if they could hurry it a bit.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Hey there anthony - yes, I think it is something you definitely have to experience for yourself. As I said, it is a winner on so many other levels, they just are a little haphazard in the execution, and the price kind of sucks. RE: your xmas party, they only do maximum table bookings of 8, though they do have a small private function room. Also (if I remember correctly), they may drop the lunch special leading up to the Christmas period.
Hiya thanh - yeah, I too thought they were either frozen or just left to dry out too much. As they were big they would take a little bit of cooking - at least 10 minutes. Yeah…work ALWAYS gets in the way of good eating