Stillwater in Launceston

You know how you acquire memories which get softer, and better, the longer time goes on?

Well my memories of Tidal Water Restaurant, the superb restaurant situated at St Helens from the late 90’s/early 2000’s, which subsequently relocated to Launceston and morphed into Stillwater, are like that. I possess two menus from Tidal Water Restaurant, one of which graces the cover of my prized personal Recipe Book. The meals at Tidal Water were stunning, and faultless. The service was such that I have never witnessed the same since.

People travelled from all over Tasmania to eat there. My parents did. They took friends, who in turn took more friends. The food was way before its time, and was simply out of this world. I loved it there, even more than I love Marque IV (if it had existed then, which it didn’t).

That is the background to my visit yesterday to Stillwater. Given that the owners are the same people, and that trillions of diners there have absolutely raved about Stillwater, I naturally expected the same, or better, than the old Tidal Water.

I was sadly let down.

It breaks my heart to think back to my lunch yesterday. To start with, there was an elementary spelling mistake on the blackboard menu, which I pointed out to the waitress as she seated me. Her response was to ask me if I was a teacher. That was it! No attempt to ask me what the mistake was, or to fix it. It was still there like that when we left at the end of the lunch period. Now to me, that’s OK for a pub (and even then it’s not, but you know what I mean!), but for somewhere like Stillwater, I’d assume there would be NO spelling mistakes (or mistakes of ANY kind) anywhere, let alone left all day like that! A minor glitch, yes, so let’s move on.

We had a lunch meeting, so three of us dined. We decided the Stillwater’s taste plate ($19.50) of “four continually changing tastes/flavours” sounded good, so ordered three of those to start with. Todays tastes were:
A latte glass of the soup of the day, which was Cauliflower, scallop and black truffle salsa; a tiny square of Asian sugar cooked pork belly; a crumbed scallop with a ginger syrup over it; and an Asian prawn salad.

Great idea but extraordinarily ordinary. The soup was fine. The pork belly was fine. The crumbed scallop was a crumbed scallop. The prawn salad was a tad better than the other three offerings on the tasting plate, but not much. As I said, they were all fine, but not outstanding – like I expected them to be.

Next came mains. I was torn between the Thai fish cakes ($28.50, on ginger and mirin jasmine rice, fragrant coconut curry sauce and Asian herb salad), and the Salt and Pepper squid ($27), so asked the opinion of the waitress, who said that a bunch of customers yesterday had raved about the Fish Cakes. Had it been somewhere else I definitely wouldn’t have ordered them but with the memory of the brilliant meals I’d eaten in the past at TW and aware of the huge reputation of SW, I selected the fish cakes.

Big mistake! They were worse than awful! I simply don’t like to be so negative, so won’t dwell on how bad they were, but let me just say that if any of my grandchildren can’t make better Thai Fish Cakes than those, I’ll eat my hat!

My plate, complete with 2/3 uneaten food, was cleared back at the end of the meal by the waitress who didn’t raise a hair, or enquire as to why her customer hadn’t eaten much on the plate. Unbelievable!

My lunch companions had the Pork Belly ($26.50) mains (same as entrée except piled higher), and the Herb and Pepper seared Atlantic Salmon ($29), lemon butter mash and crushed peas with tomato/Tasmanian reisling reduction. The pork was apparently brilliant, but the salmon wasn’t up to expectations.

We desserted on an Apple and Rhubarb Cake, a Chocolate Tart and a Citrus Syrup Cake – all $7.70 each. Ordinary.

Look, I’m truly sorry – about the moan above; about the fact that I’d built up my expectations so high; about the fact that this establishment seems to have gone downhill so much for me; that I didn’t enjoy driving all the way to Launceston for a lunch that was so ordinary; that I paid an arm and a leg for the privilege too ($250).

If I close my eyes, do you think I would wake up, and it would all have been a bad dream? Would that it were so….I had waited three years for this day to come (ie the day I get to review Stillwater for my blog). You let me down big time, SW. I’m broken hearted about it.