20 Waterview Walk, Docklands | Facebook
My goodness! What an absolute dud of a night! Having read generally positive reviews of Cafe de Kikaku and seen them to always be full with their lunch time crowd, I thought that we were in for a fun night with their quirky menu.
We arrived at the restaurant just before 7pm, walking past their sign that says “Melbourne’s best ramen” out the front. There was no ramen on the menu. But the menu was definitely interesting and most items on it looked good. I decided on the salmon tataki (was a salady thing, with “flash seared” salmon, crispy pork, various veg items and a vegetable soba), but was told that they didn’t have salmon.
“No salmon?”
“Yes, no salmon at all today.”
“So not even the other dishes with salmon in it?” [Keeping in mind that half their menu were salmon dishes!]
“Yes, no salmon. Except for the salmon croquettes.”
In the end I ordered the Hades Laugh fried rice and hubby got the pad thai – neither of which were particularly of Japanese cuisine, but there was no salmon in the kitchen! Apart from the croquettes, so we ordered them too.
When the salmon croquettes came out we were pleasantly surprised and thought, ‘ooh, this should be a good meal’. They were crunchy, tasty and looked good. Then the pad thai came out and it looked a little odd. It came in a round silver dish, much like what you normally find Indian curries served in, and had two prawn crackers on top. Flavours were ok, it was tasty, but didn’t really taste like a pad thai. The fried rice? It was huge! But looked and tasted a lot like the pad thai. The main difference was that mine had pork and rice in it, the pad thai was mostly chicken and noodles.
Salmon croquettes – yummo!
Hades Laugh fried rice – a spicy dish with pork belly and basil. I can’t find my pad thai photo! But just imagine the fried rice in a silver bowl.
Anyway, I couldn’t finish the fried rice so asked for a doggy bag – my leftover rice filled up the entire container! It was like receiving two serves on one plate. Then we asked for the dessert menu as we’d spied their padang flavoured tempura icecream with salted coconut broth and gummy something or other. It sounded intriguing at the least and I wanted to try it! However, we were then advised that the only dessert they had that night was the chef’s special (an icecream filled bun, which wasn’t actually in the menu) and icecream, but only in about 3 of their 10 or so listed flavours. So we passed.
It was a bit of a disappointing experience overall, especially when you can’t order from half of the menu. Both our meals tasted the same and the chair to table height ratio was all wrong! On the flipside, service was friendly and we left there feeling full.
Rating: One mochi
