SOS, Melbourne

SOS is a Vege-Aquatic (I don't really know what that means, but I'm guessing along the lines of "hip", "cool" and "exotic") restaurant located on Melbourne Central, one of the hottest and most prominent spots, in fact. It looks really impressive from the outside; secret sliding door and the works. It's also under the same management as Taxi (one of my favourite restaurants that I WILL review someday) and when Mum was here a while ago, I jumped at the chance to go (dining fancy and not out of my pocket money, bwahahha).

By the way, I should mention when I went to SOS, it was a month ago and I didn't have the intention of ever blogging about food back then, so the photos...kinda sucked. :D Sorry peeps, but food is much better than it looked.

Once you enter the great secret mystery sliding doors of the future to the interior of SOS...(I wish I had taken a photo, but yeah)

SOS Melbourne has a really beautiful (not to mention huge-ass) seating lounge, where you are served drinks while you wait for a table, if you're one of those dumb people like me who didn't make a booking on a Friday night. We were immediately given very good service by the maitre'd upon arrival, and we waited approximately 10-15 minutes before being given a table outside the terrace, overlooking the State Library of Victoria. The seating in SOS is kind of weird though - there were lots of long tables a la a canteen setting, and fewer individual tables in comparison. However, much to my relief, we got an individual table.

After ordering, we sat back and relaxed and waited ages, AGES, for our food. I was very hungry and I remembered thinking that the food had better be good (for both time and money) or I'll kick some SOS-chef butt.

Also, a side note: I think the menu has changed since I last went there (cos I can't remember the exact names of what we ate, so I hit up the menu online again), so I can't really remember some of the dishes.

First up we ordered an entree to share: Octopus Carpaccio with perilla, ginger crisp, enoki mushrooms and daikon radish ($18). And yes, I don't know what is a perilla, so don't ask.

Oooo...octopus buried under stuff!

It was very very yummy, very tangy and the texture of the octopus is just right. The enoki mushrooms were fabulous and I love the fish roe (might it be perilla?), and the radish added the thing needed to lighten the flavours. I even love the ginger crisps!!

Next up, the mains. I had the Seafood Pot au Feu, with calamari, farmed paradise prawns, clams, white bait and fregola ($30). It's actually an entree but I ordered it in the size for main because I'm just clamoring for prawns.

Seafood surprisingly on a plate not a pot

Looks pretty, right? :D It tasted just okay. I mean, it was good and all, but I had a feeling that I could probably recreate it. Maybe not as good, but something similar. My sister had the same thought. All the same, it's a good dish, but not really worth the 30 bucks I paid for. Everything is cooked nicely, but I would've preferred more prawns (I only had three), and it's also just a little heavy on the spices. Something lighter might be good.

My sister had the Baked Murray Cod, with baby spinach, braised fennel, radicchio romesco dressing, oak leaf salad ($33).

It's...a fish called Cod.

I only had a little bite of that one, but it's rather juicy fish and it's cooked just nicely. A very nice dish especially with the combination of the vegetables. By the way, you should know by now that I don't know what all those fancy non-English things are, so yeah. Can't help it.

Mum had the best dish, in my opinion, the Grilled Trevally, with green beans, red onion, marsh samphire, toasted almond and parsley ($32).

Ooooooo wish fish dish!!

It was soooo good!! The fish was just, wow. It's soft and tender meat with a crispy skin that's just so so yummy. The sauce they served the fish with is perfect for it, and the almonds added a wonderful flavor to the dish. It's an almost perfect fish-dish that anyone could wish.

And now, for the dessert!!

The first one was a Chocolate Mousse Ensemble ($14) which is no longer on the current menu; I can't seem to find it anyway.

Mousse, good. Berries, blah.

Now I didn't eat much of this as well, but it's rather good, the mousse. I would think the berry compote at the side is a slight mistake - it's too heavy and came off tasting like cough medicine. We basically finished the mousse and sort of left the berries. Not a very good complement to the mousse.

Mum chose the White Chocolate Marquise with honeycomb, strawberry and lavender ice-cream ($14).

Mum always chooses the good stuff.

It was swoooon as well. It's really a great dessert! I love the tastes of how everything combined together to create a perfect, light and yummy dessert. You can taste the chocolate, the honeycomb...every taste you're supposed to taste without it being overbearing. Thumbs up!

And MY dessert...I've wanted to have this sort for a very very very VERY long time until my mouse whiskers all fell out and grew new ones and fell out again and I never tried it until that night at SOS.

A CHEESE PLATTER. ($10)

(bad photo but) OMG I HAVE DIED AND GONE TO MOUSE HEAVEN

It was HEAVEN. Oh my God, I love every single bit of that cheese platter. I ordered some ten-year-old French Cheese, by the way, which I have forgotten the name of but not the taste! Such such excellent cheese, cheesily wonderful and the crackers, grapes, figs and quince paste they served along with the cheese just complements everything perfectly. I could sit there and eat cheese for the next 5 mouse-whisker-dropping-regrowing cycles, no joke.

And then we had coffee (me; cappuccino and Mum; latte and big sis; wimp) ($4) to round off our beautiful dinner night out!

Cappuccino love and we are coffee freaks!

Overall, a very pleasant dining experience, despite it being sort of cold, cos we were seated outside. We went there around 730PM and finished dinner at 11PM. :D You could sort of tell that the food DID take quite a while to arrive, which would be my only grouse. Service wasn't excellent to the point of exceptional excellence, but they were polite and helpful, which is good.

I would think the price is just a little too much - if it's maybe 5 dollars less for each course then it'll be reasonable, but I supposed you're also paying for ambience and stuff like that.

I would go back there - just not in near future. Gotta start counting my pennies, and I'm probably going to eat like 10 cheese platters instead of ordering mains and stuff. :D

- Mouse

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SOS Melbourne
Level 3
Melbourne Central
211 La Trobe Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Phone: (03) 9645 0808

EDIT: I was told by tummyrumbles that SOS is now closed. Sad. :( But if it ever reopens...well, here you go.