Sorry I've been slack but I'm saving to go overseas soon and so my eating out has to be curtailed. I did however make an exception last Tuesday night to eat dinner at the Verve Cafe and participate in their trivia night.
I really like the Verve Cafe... think my love started back when I first discovered it. It had the coolest stencils on the toilet wall, or otherwise you had to walk up this rickety staircase to go to the official loos. I like being afforded a different view of Brisbane. I also liked the way Verve is small with a cozy and cool vibe.
Anyway, I have digressed... back to the food.
Verve earns points for having more than the usual 1 vegetarian main meal option- and not all of them include eggplant!!
There are multiple vegetarian pasta dishes, and pizzas to choose from.
I usually go for the pumpkin pizza which is yum, however on Tuesday night I went for the artichoke heart risotto.
Now if you have read my previous posts you would know that I haven't been all that lucky with my risottos- so I was hoping that this one would end my bad streak.
Unfortunately no.
The rice was not cooked. Yep that's right- Not cooked- it was crunchy. I ended up sending it back- something I hate to do having worked in a kitchen myself. They sent me back another one- rice was still very, very al dente, AND it had a different sauce (I had originally chosen a cream sauce, and the second attempt had a tomato based sauce).
No offer to have the meal taken off the bill- or for a complimentary drink- or anything to help save such a sour experience.
I have also noticed that Verve never (rarely??) puts on vegetarian specials, and their beautiful sounding vegetable soups are all made on meat stock.
These days though I am starting to wonder if my liking of Verve is just due to nostalgia, they don't even have the cool stencils on the walls.
Think I will need to search for a new funky place to drink and eat in the city, and I'm definitely not ordering risotto for while.
Score- 3 out of 5 artichokes
