Stokehouse

I am positive I found my restaurant of the year. For my recent birthday my boyfriend finally took me to Stokehouse. I have been dying to try this place out since the Taste of Melbourne festival a few years ago, and it not disappoint me.

Situated right by the water edge on St Kilda beach it has a lovely relaxing atmosphere, even at night. Stokehouse works on 2 levels, lower floor is casual dining and upstairs in fine dining. Since it was a special event, we dined upstairs.

Onto the food! For entree we had the Spaghetti alla chitarra, which is basically clam and cuttlefish with saffron. It was divine, the pasta was perfectly al dente and the chili and saffron just gave it that nice kick.

Mains we had the duck and steak. The steak was exactly medium rare as we wanted with a nice crust of flavour on top. The duck was laced with rasberries and truffle honey sauce. Duck is one of those things where you get it right or you get it awfully wrong. In this case it was done so so so right. The meat was just tender and the sauce was just rich enough, but then there was the raspberries to balance it out with the hint of sourness. The duck skin was so done to a point that it almost had me fooled as pork crackling. LOVED IT

Desserts, we ordered the special of the night which was an apricot pistachio nougat with berry sorbet. Overall it was a great dessert, only 1 small hiccup. There was a pistachio shell inside my nougat that almost chipped my tooth. Besides that part, it was a delightful dessert.

I think the wine selection is worth a mention too, the wine list is a good selection that really caters for all tastebuds.


Overall I would rate this a 18.5/20. It would have scored 19 if not for the nut shell.