Marque IV review from Jamie

As you know, Rita's five children took her to Marque IV last Sunday night for the big birthday celebration. Jamie, son of Rita, and Restaurant Manager at Ebb Restaurant in Swansea, has written his own words about his first-time impression of Marque IV last week.....

Overall rating from Jamie – 9 ½ /10

Impressive for Jamie were:

Everything was fresh, all food made to order, nothing pre-cooked
Shows extra care and attention that goes into meals at Marque IV
Atmosphere in restaurant – I was expecting it to be stuffy but was pleasantly surprised about the general appearance, the way it felt and the wait staff.

Paul was a lovely softly spoken man who didn’t wank on about his food. When you broke down what his food was, I don’t think the food was pretentious at all. It was just good food that went well together.

I can see how some people would think it WAS pretentious when you use words like sabayon, soufflé and other French words to describe the way the food was cooked because I’ve come across that frequently when people in Ebb are hesitant to order food that they they’re not familiar with.

At Ebb we constantly have to dumb the menu down for punters. I find people still order the food but we’ve just dumbed down the description. I don’t think Marque IV should have to dumb it down. People should be more open-minded and go out of their comfort zone more with food.

Having said that, the dishes we had weren’t really out of anyone’s comfort zone. The menu might have read differently but when you tasted them they tasted really good and looked good on the plate and were obviously prepared with a high level of skill and passion.

The wine list was perfect – there was something for every budget and taste.

My favourites out of the full degustation were:

Ginger sorbet
Sugar cured ocean trout
Soup
Blue cheese soufflé
Chicken roulade "thing"
Lime panna cotta

I don’t see where anyone could fault Marque IV and bag it out as being pretentious if you’ve eaten there, unless you’ve gone in there with a preconceived idea. The criticism last week about the sweetness of the food could be justified as a lot of dishes do have a sweet element but most of the dishes had either a citrus or salty counterbalancing effect contained within them anyway.

Anyone who wants to have an idea of how food is going in Hobart should go there. I will try to eat there at least once every menu change because unless you go to Sydney or Melbourne and eat out there a lot (as well as places like Picalilly, Smolt, Meadowbank, us etc), that’s the only way to keep your finger on the pulse of good food and where it’s at.