I know I’m going out on a limb here.
I’m sure I must be the only person in Melbourne who wasn’t impressed by Coda. But at least I have the Jetsetting Parents to back me up on the NOT verdict. Trust me, I really wanted to like Coda given its mountain of rave reviews, but in all honestly I just can’t recommend it based on my experience.
The pluses first: funky underground bunker space with just the right amount of difficult-to-find coolness, a buzzy yet relaxed atmosphere and excellent service – they catered for all of my parentals’ requests for communal cutlery, new bowls etc etc without a blink (while I face-palmed in acute embarrassment).
The minuses: heavy-handed salting, dry jasmine rice, high prices relative to the good but not outstanding quality of the food and bad ventilation.
We stuck to the predominantly Vietnamese/Thai dishes and ordered a selection of small eats and a curry with rice to share. We just couldn’t fathom mixing up Asian and Western dishes in the same meal (yah yah, fusion whatever).
Crispy prawn and tapioca betel leaf and spanner crab, galangal, roasted chilli and lime fresh betel leaf ($5.80 each). Chef Adam D’Sylva used to work at Longrain and he appears to have brought Longrain‘s signature dish across to his restaurant. The fresh leaf was a lovely delicate balance of flavours, while the crispy version was interesting texturally, with a light crunch on the outside and juicy soft spanner prawn meat on the inside. However, the crab meat was too salty for my liking and combined with the fried batter it left me gulping down water.
Hanoi style crispy rice paper rolls with nuoc nam dipping sauce ($6.80 each). A lightly fried rice paper roll which was pleasant but not spectacular.
Soft rice paper roll with pork, prawn, perilla and chive bud ($6 each). Mum said that the wrapped up prawns were way too salty.
Blackened quail ($7 each). I quite liked this dish, with a teeny juicy quail and a teeny spray of contrasting daikon and shiso salad.
Coda rolls ($10.80 each). When these came out Mum was like ‘What?? Spring rolls?’. Not quite, Mum. An unusual combination of super rich bone marrow, ginger and shiitake mushrooms encased in a Chinese spring roll pastry and served with a branch of rice paddy herb and white pepper dipping sauce. I personally didn’t love it only because I’ve now realised that I’m actually not such a fan of bone marrow, but it was certainly the most creative dish we ordered and the furthest departure from traditional Vietnamese/Thai fare. But notice the price for each fried morsel.
Roasted yellow duck curry ($36). This dish had nice big chunks of meat but unfortunately the curry sauce was distinctly salty and not sufficiently tempered by the jasmine rice. And I’m not fussy with my rice but even I have to admit it was dry – how is it possible to stuff up steamed rice? Oh the ignominy of paying $5 for dry rice!
While dessert is normally a must-do for us, we were so uninspired with our experience by then (and conscious of our mounting bill) that we gave it a miss.
To top off the disappointing evening, when I came home RM said to me ‘Where have you been? You smell like a kitchen!’. And yes, my clothes and my hair all smelled like I’d just been cooking inside a greasy Chinese restaurant. Luckily I wasn’t wearing anything that couldn’t be thrown in the wash quickly, but I wouldn’t want to pay $40 a head for dinner (without drinks) only to have to get my suit or silk dress dry-cleaned as well.
So there you have it. Our main complaint was that the food at Coda, while generally good and beautifully presented, wasn’t that much more outstanding than the fare on offer in Victoria Street. I know that the eateries of Victoria Street provide a different dining experience (expect no service, flourescent lighting, plastic plates) but I’m willing to be seated at wipe-down plastic table if I can eat similar, albeit less sophisticated, food for much, much cheaper. Maybe I would have been better off if I’d stuck to the Italian/French dishes instead? For me Coda just wasn’t good enough to deserve the two to three times mark up, sorry.
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Coda Bar & Restaurant, Basement 141 Flinders Lane, Melbourne +61 96503155
I’ve been curious about Coda since I got back to Melbourne, but it sort of fell off my radar as I came to greater self-awareness that I’m not particularly interested in high-end cuisine like Coda, Attica etc. Thank you for making me feel less inadequate for not having been, and validating my kiasu value judgements about expensive Asian food.
.-= Billy´s last blog ..Chapelli’s =-.
Twitter: cloudcontrol
| May 21, 2010, 9:24 am
LOL Billy!
I don’t mind paying for expensive Asian food – I’ve enjoyed anything from Nobu to a 3 Michelin starred restaurant in Hong Kong for $250 a head. However, as I said in the post I really didn’t feel that the quality of what I’d had was so much better that it justified the much higher prices. I’m sure many others will disagree with me as I know Coda is a hot favourite amongst Melbourne diners – getting a booking was pretty hard.
Jetsetting Joyce
Good on you for calling it how you see it. It’s hard to go against the flow but things change in restaurants and they need to know what their patrons are thinking and keep on their toes.
Twitter: eatdrinkbekerry
| May 21, 2010, 10:09 am
Hi Kerry
Thanks for your comment and welcome to the blog! To be honest I did feel a bit uncomfortable with the review but there were just so many not-quite-good-enough elements for me to add up to a NOT. Now that I’ve posted it I have found a few people who agree with me, luckily :–)
Jetsetting Joyce
Yeah, I often find myself underwhelmed by the high-end Asian places everyone else raves about. Gingerboy, Longrain, Seamstress… all were fine, with a couple of stand-out menu items, but generally, I spend most of my time thinking “Eh, they do it better in Footscray for a fraction of the price”.
Twitter: rbbrown
| May 21, 2010, 12:33 pm
Hi Ruth
Ah, but I have been impressed with Gingerboy and Longrain before (though not Seamstress) so I feel that I am open-minded about high-end Asian food. Maybe I was a victim of my own high expectations of Coda – after my experience I’m really not sure why customers aren’t going to Gingerboy, Longrain or Footscray instead.
Jetsetting Joyce
I suppose part of that price we all pay for is the service they provide. =) However I do agree that when I tried it out the duck was quite salty, and the rice wasnt that great! But yet with hot piping foods being served up to the table, its inevitable that we start smelling like curry, dont you think?
Hi Michelle
Thanks for the comment. Yes I think what you say may be true – good service doesn’t tend to come cheap. On the other hand, I think any restaurant, whether high-end or low-end, should provide adequately ventilated premises. To an extent I can excuse it in a cheap-and-nasty restaurant, but I don’t think Coda are aiming for that end of the market and it was an unpleasant surprise when I got home.
Jetsetting Joyce
Wonderful food presentation indeed. The pictures all show that. I will tell you that in almost all Vietnamese/Thai restaurants I’ve been to, Vietnamese will always be salty while Thai is spicy. That’s a given. But I don’t know maybe it’s just me and my taste. I love spicy food, not salty though.
.-= Tanblekning´s last blog ..Tandblekning Hemma =-.
Hi there,
I, too, wasn’t a fan of Coda. As much as I WANTED to like this place, I just felt that the food was overdone (though some dishes were quite lovely).
.-= Libby´s last blog ..Rendezvous with Rama =-.
Hi Libby
Thanks for your comment – what do you mean by ‘overdone’? As in overcooked, over-styled or too many competing flavours/textures in one dish? Just want to clarify because I actually think it was underdone ie except for the Coda rolls there wasn’t enough of a departure from the usual Victoria Street offerings for me to go ‘wow’ (given the higher price tag).
Jetsetting Joyce
Hi Joyce,
Sorry, I probably should have make myself more clear! I thought that with some of the dishes, they tried too hard to make the food stand out by putting way too many flavours/ingredients into one thing that the end result was just overkill. Some dishes such as the sizzling prawns just had way too much going for it, a simpler version would have been more successful.
.-= Libby´s last blog ..Rendezvous with Rama =-.
Thanks Libby, that’s very insightful!
Jetsetting Joyce
Agreed. Been to Coda twice: when it was new(ish) and again recently. I think it’s certainly competent, good in parts, but doesn’t deserve the hype. Seamstress is the same. Over hyped, under delivered.
Longrain I rate, as I do Gingerboy.
Hi Dave
We are high-end Asian food kindred spirits! I am exactly the same with the split – HOT for Longrain and Gingerboy, NOT for Seamstress and Coda. Do you have any other suggestions?
Jetsetting Joyce
Yum, those pictures makes me hungry
Really nice pics! Makes me very hungry
I was close to throwing up. That does not look good at all! Ew.
/Kim.
Often what happens wit successful cafes and restaurants is that that their presentation takes over from the eating experience. You are spot on with your assessment. There are many Asian cafes in the Footscray, Fitszroy, Brunswick and of course Richmond, where you can eat traditional Asian food that is healthy and affordable.
Nice photos. Those pictures makes me really hungary! A good photographer can make the food look so good, but when I try to take “food photos” myself it doesn’t come close to this. Good job!