Toby’s Restaurant

Saturday 20th June 2009
It was another quiet day at the Café, we had a full compliment of Saturday girls working and after they had cleaned everything, Ian had trouble keeping them busy apart from a half hour spell at about 12 noon.
The kids wanted to go to Jungle Bungle today but it was closed, it is an indoor attraction but if the weather is bad they don’t open it, work that one out.
One of our Saturday girls babysat for us tonight while we went to Toby’s Restaurant for a meal, it worked quite well really because her mum wanted to go to a party not far from us and the longer we stayed out, the longer she could stay at the party.
We drove to Wyndham Resort where Toby’s Restaurant is, it poured with rain all the way there and we thought we were going to get soaked as there were no parking spaces close by, someone must have been smiling on us, because as soon as we parked the car it stopped raining, just long enough to get into the restaurant.
As we walked into the restaurant we were greeted by one of our customers from the Café, she was Duty Manager for the night and turned out to be the person who had replied to Ians email.
After apologising profusely about the way we had been treated last Sunday and going into great detail about the reprimand that the breakfast staff had received, she showed us to our table, a table for two overlooking the swimming pool, which was probably the best position in the place.
We would have felt a bit of apprehension normally under these circumstances, complained about the service, received an apology and accepted the offer to return for dinner, staff in trouble because of the complaint, having accepted their offer to return they know who we are, we haven’t got a clue if any of the staff we got into trouble are working tonight, a recipe for disaster or at least payback, but it was great, we felt good right from the start.
We did the important bit first and ordered a bottle of wine, it was a Riesling from Churchview, one of our local wineries, it wasn’t the cheapest bottle of wine on the wine list, but they would have done well to pick a better wine for our palate, this was probably the best Riesling we had ever tasted and we will go looking for the winery in the near future.
We decided to order from the daily specials and neither of us could choose what starter to have, so we shared two between us, one a Prawn dish and the other Fillets of Whiting, both delicious.
For our main course, Carolyn had Herb Crusted Chicken Breast while Ian had Baked Swordfish Loin, both were to die for although Ian reckons the Swordfish had the edge.
During our main course we ran out of wine and had to get another bottle, that was a bummer, it also meant that we had to take a break after our main course before we could order our desserts because we had the wine to finish and we didn’t want to spoil it by eating a sweet before we had finished.
After the wine, we ordered Dessert, Carolyn had Chocolate Tart which she wasn’t totally impressed with because the Flan case tasted salty, undaunted she scraped all the chocolate out and left the case.
Ian had a Berry Cheesecake, homemade and quite tasty but not as special as it might have been, but then the rest of the meal had been so good, the desserts had a lot to live up to.
After we had finished eating we went and sat in front of the log fire in the lounge area, had a couple more drinks and a chat with the staff and then called a cab.
When we got home, we put the babysitter into our cab, having paid for our part of the journey first of course, and sent her on her way to find her mums party, having forgotten to pay her.
We put the kids to bed, had another drink and then hit the pit.

That was the best meal out that we have had since we have been in Australia, that’s almost 18 months of eating Good Steak or Average to Bad everything else and tonight has reminded us of how good food can be.
The Rain Stopped, so we didn’t get wet going to the restaurant, the table position and ambience in the restaurant was great, the wine was excellent, the food was delightful, the service was impeccable, the taxi arrived on time, the kids and the babysitter were still alive, the babysitter forgot to ask for her money before leaving and the restaurant paid some of the bill, now that’s what we call an exceptional night out and we feel good.