Mount Hawthorn’s Scarborough beach road café strip has long been a casual place for coffee and mainly café style restaurants offering a variety of multi-cultural cuisine (as well as the Paddo’s boutique international beers, but that’s another story). Azure neatly fits into this culture but with a few subtle differences such as some lounge like seating, in-house patisserie, and sheek décor. Azure’s size and floor plan also ensures ample al fresco lounge sofa dining, sofa benches, abundant sofa cushions, and of course dinner table seating.
Part of the chic design of the walls
Azure's cuisine is based on their own interpretation of modern Australian fare, with a hint of Mediterranean influences. On top of that, Azure is also a patisserie offering a decent selection of cakes for both dine in and takeaway (with takeaway prices being about 40% cheaper).
Rosemary and Garlic Ciabatta Bread - $6.40
The ciabatta bread was light and thin and had a nice texture and flavour over commonly used white bread. The bread had light flavours of rosemary and garlic, and was grilled with a light crunch and charcoaled criss cross patterns.
Duo of Summer Duck - $32.50
This dish was described as duck and amarena cherry confit, and seared duck apple limoncello
The confit consisted of softened duck meat assembled into a presentable circular shape. The confit had a distinctive duck meat taste to it but was also seasoned to bring out the flavour. The sweetness from the amarena cherry was nice to mix into the duck, combining it with a sweet taste to lighten up the duck.
The seared duck was gently cooked with skin on, and the apple limoncello gave made it a bit refreshing with a slight sour and lesser sweet taste to it. When you look at the two duck offerings, they contrasted and complimented each other.
Pesto and Chorizo Pasta - $26.50
This dish was described as spaghettini, pesto, chorizo, cherry tomatoes, pancetta, lemon and shredded parmesan reggiano.
The spaghettini was cooked right - al dente. The combination of the salty Mediterranean style ingredients gave the dish a fair amount of salt, whilst the other flavours were subtle. Overall, this dish was well made, contained gourmet like ingredients, but didn’t challenge the boundaries or offer up complex tastes for a Mediterranean pasta.
Mediterranean oven roasted vegetables $6.40
This oven roasted dish included eggplant, carrot and capsicum. The dish it was presented on was a large attractive dish, but the useable area did not hold a big serve even though the substance to these vegetables was greater than say a garden salad. Being oven roasted and containing olive oil, the vegetables were a welcome change to standard steamed vegetables with a softer and warmer roasted taste.
Tuesday menu
This dish had two pieces of chicken sandwiching roast capsicum and eggplant. The chicken was cooked, was pleasantly not dry, had a light seasoning, and was topped with a pureed tomato. Overall, this was a reasonable chicken dish with definite Mediterranean influences.
Though ordered medium rare, the beef was in between rare and medium rare. Though saying that, the beef was very tender, cooked well and had a faint taste of “char-grilled”. Otherwise for an $18 special, and served with salad at a place like Azure, this seemed like pretty good value.
The pasta consisted of spaghetti, prawns and pieces of fish with a tomato based sauce. Though the chef cooks pasta right and adds ingredients that work well together, this dish otherwise seemed like a pretty standard seafood pasta dish.
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Black forest cake - $12.50
The black forest cake was made using mousse rather than layers of chocolate cake. The black forest cake had cherries, a small amount of nice warm alcohol, and bits of chocolate and a candied cherry on top. Though the dessert had chocolate throughout, it didn’t have an overpowering sense of chocolate and in fact possibly could have been more chocolatey if you were to compare it against other chocolate desserts.
Blackberry cheesecake - $11.50
The cheesecake was baked and had a nice light taste about it and felt a bit refreshing – it was not overly sweet and had a hint of lemon. The cheesecake had a light chocolate base, was topped with a light blackberry compote (which seemed to be the only real prominent berry in the cheesecake) and a couple of pieces of decorative white chocolate.
Tuesday menu
On Tuesdays, Azure has a different menu that has a large selection of $18 mains. I managed to make it to a Tuesday dinner to try out this cheaper menu as well.
Antipasto Piccolo - $24.50
This antipasto dish consisted of garlic prawns, lightly fried baby octopus, olives, chorizo, lightly crumbed squid, hummus, and Turkish bread. This is more of a share platter that is enough for two to three people to happily nibble on as an appetiser.
The various offerings were a bit of a change to your typical antipasto. The baby octopus was lightly coated in oil and not tough or too chewy, the chorizo was lightly pan fried to bring out the flavour, the crumbed squid was lightly coated and fried, and the garlic prawns were cooked with a garlic sauce that had a lot of flavour that I found myself dipping the Turkish bread into at times instead of the hummus.
Salad - $13.50
This salad was quite an interesting salad with avocado, cucumber, apple, rocket, grape tomato, red onion, feta, roast soft potato, cashew nuts, mustard citrus emulsion, sesame seeds, radish, string beans. The list of things I found in this salad was quite long indeed!
The taste… Well the blend of all these ingredients made it an interesting salad (for both the tastes and the various ingredients). The salad also had a light refreshing feel with a nice tangy mustard citrus emulsion to bring it all together.
Mediterranean chicken - $18
This dish had two pieces of chicken sandwiching roast capsicum and eggplant. The chicken was cooked, was pleasantly not dry, had a light seasoning, and was topped with a pureed tomato. Overall, this was a reasonable chicken dish with definite Mediterranean influences.
MSA Grain Fed Beef - $18
Though ordered medium rare, the beef was in between rare and medium rare. Though saying that, the beef was very tender, cooked well and had a faint taste of “char-grilled”. Otherwise for an $18 special, and served with salad at a place like Azure, this seemed like pretty good value.
Seafood Pasta - $18
The pasta consisted of spaghetti, prawns and pieces of fish with a tomato based sauce. Though the chef cooks pasta right and adds ingredients that work well together, this dish otherwise seemed like a pretty standard seafood pasta dish.
In summary, Azure is a nice chic place in Mount Hawthorn to sit back and relax to some modern Mediterranean/Australian cuisine. The food lives up to what it sets out to be, and the addition of the patisserie should spark an interest in the cake lover.
Points to note: Mediterranean influenced modern Australian cuisine in a casual modern and sheek café/restaurant environment. The patisserie serves up some house-made cakes.
Go for: Good food, drinks, and pastries in a more sheek and modern restaurant on the Mount Hawthorn café strip.
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Azure
40/148 Scarborough Beach Road
MOUNT HAWTHORN WA 6016
(08) 9443 5433
http://www.azurerestaurant.com.au
Trading Hours
Lunch – Tuesday to Sunday: 12noon to 2pm
Dinner – Tuesday to Sunday: 6pm to 10pm
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2 comments:
sheek = chic*
Cheers, thanks for the pick up.
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