Taste Rutherglen

4 Reviews on “Taste Rutherglen”

• Lizzy

  Beautiful hearty food, perfect wine list and fantastic service. Will definitely be back!!! Definitely worth the effort to try if you are in the area

  October 16, 2020, 2:23 am

  Log in to Reply
• Lindsay Mann

  After lunch at Ripe at Andrew Buller wines, we decided to have dinner at the sister restaurant Taste. We were not disappointed – we had a very good dining experience. The staff were excellent (we had been served by some of the same people at Ripe) and provided great service. We enjoyed every dish. We decided to choose our own wine rather than have the wine pairing. We particularly enjoyed the Berkshire pork belly – pork belly presented in an amazing way. I also thought the bread and butter pudding was pretty good. We also enjoyed the live music coming from the adjoining beer garden.

  February 20, 2020, 2:23 am

  Log in to Reply
• Two Sheds

  Taste is essentially your evening meal option in Rutherglen if you don’t fancy eating in the pub or a having a fast food meal. But, it doesn’t quite work. For a start, key things it offers are expensive if you don’t take the pizza option. Mains and entrees are steeply priced. Mains start at $35. The specials are $38. A humble cheese plate is $25. Essentially Taste is pitching at an upmarket dining option but it misses the mark.There were only a couple of mains on the printed menu – four I think – and a three specials. The first main I chose, Millawa Duck, wasn’t available. I’d selected it after a lengthy chat with the server who’d assured me it was a very good dish. Convinced by the patter, I selected it. Several minutes after if chosen it the server came back to say that it wasn’t available as the duck hadn’t arrived. That struck me as odd. How could you not know one of the dishes on a very restricted menu with limited options wasn’t available? Why allow a customer to debate its merits with you, then select it, only to later have to unselect it because of poor communication between the kitchen and serving staff? Odd.My second choice for main was a lamb dish. Lamb on a bed of carrot purée and green beans. My partner chose the whiting with scallops. We both had the same view of these meals. They were too small and had fairly average flavour. We were both hungry and unsatisfied after these meals. Both dishes were quite nicely presented. But both lacked substance and any sort of flavour punch. The most exciting part of my lamb dish was the beans which were thrilling crisp. They’d been cooked perfectly. But the lamb itself was very bland and the carrot purée just ok. Not one thing about it suggested to me that it was worth its $38 price tag. The look on my partner’s face when she got her dish was priceless. She was wondering if she’d been mistakenly given an entree size. She felt her meal was flat too. Essentially lacklustre and overpriced.Our dishes to finish were a mixed bag. My partner’s creme brûlée with coconut and raspberry was delicious. It was very nicely done and she loved it. At $12 it was also reasonably priced. But, my cheese platter with local and international cheeses was a different story. It was $25 and under par again at that price. As it was served at the table I was told that one of the three cheeses actually wasn’t available. It wasn’t that the van had broken down, it just wasn’t available. If it was a Milawa cheese it was probably in a parcel of goods due to be delivered with the missing Milawa duck. They did say they’d knock $5 off the price and did provide generous slabs of the two available but unidentified cheeses, a blue and a cheddar. It was an ok cheese plate such as it was but still quite basic. There was no quince paste, for example. Even more striking, there were no muscadelle grapes on the plate, a very surprising omission given we were dining in Rutherglen, one of the world’s best fortified wine areas. If you could pick a place in the whole of Australia you’d find muscadelle grapes you’d choose Rutherglen every time.The wine list here is ok. There’s a couple of reasonable locally sourced options which is good. Prices by the glass were ok. By the bottle they looked on the steep side again.Overall it was a sub par meal at Taste for us. It was overpriced and didn’t deliver as promised. I’d had a bit of difficulty attracting the server a couple of times so I went up to the counter to pay. I was asked what I thought of the experience and I did what I always try and do in these thankfully rare situations. That is, I just give a blandish semi evasive sort of response. I didn’t say what I really thought. I didn’t want to so I just tried to fudge the thing and give a signal that it was best not to proceed. The server did what experienced servers rarely do in these situations. She persisted and asked me for detailed feedback. Although I’d be more comfortable getting a root canal, I reluctantly gave the feedback, and very gently in a way that (accurately) suggested that I was uncomfortable doing so. The atmosphere went very cold. It wasn’t the response the server wanted. We left feeling very awkward. The night was therefore unsuccessful. I’ve loved Rutherglen and its wine district for years. We are long time visitors to the area. But we were hungry and unsatisfied. We also felt under pressure rather than happy. We’d paid around $150 to feel like this. We trouped unhappily back to our accommodation. I was glad they’d thoughtfully provided complimentary Chamber’s Muscat.

  August 20, 2019, 2:23 am

  Log in to Reply
• Brunny Girl

  I couldn’t work out if this was a craft brewery or a fine dining restaurant. They seem to want to try and be both. The bloke loved the craft beer.We had the Degustation menu. It was good – not certainly not worth the price.

  October 11, 2017, 2:23 am

  Log in to Reply