Caversham House

The House and grounds itself is lovely. Massive limestone staircase and a waterfall feature and statuesque of perhaps greek/​roman women. but seriously those things were scary, kind of like the «angels» from Dr. Who (watch it or google it!). Was freaky as, nothing elegant about it. Anyway, apart from that I can understand why it’s popular with brides. It looks rather grand, and the Swan River is literally at their doorstep, you could even float down the river to your wedding.
So the restaurant itself? The food? The Service? The ambiance? Well, we got there early and half the area was closed off as there was a wedding on that day, so the other half of the restaurant was being prepped for the reception. We were the only ones having lunch, there were a few couples, who were all tasting the food for their weddings.
The restaurant area had a nice fireplace in the corner with sofas and a chandelier over the area. The rest of the area was decked with white chairs and the ceiling had simple carvings.
I was really surprised and rather disappointed with the service. Because we weren’t part of any wedding parties they didn’t provide us with any service at all. In fact they forgot about us. Forgot to take our orders, and when they did the food took so long to come out. I ordered a glass of red and they spilled the precious wine all over my table, lucky it wasn’t on my dress! I just wasn’t impressed that they were having double standards. HELLOOO we are also paying for our meal! You just lost yourself a potential wedding hostess! HAHHAH.
Anyway, apart from not having service *SURPRISE SURPRISE*, the ambiance wasn’t there, the music was too loud and way too pop for a venue like that, they needed something soothing, jazz or just lower volume of pop songs would have been fine (I’m not saying I hate pop music, it was just so loud that I felt like I had to shout across to bf).
The food?
Our entrees were priced at $ 19.
I ordered the Duck and Pistachio Tortellini with grilled zucchini, sage cream sauce, capsicum and pistachio salsa, kiwi fruit, it came out beautifully presented. I got A (literally a… as in ONE) HUGE tortellini, with skin that was too thick and was undercooked, as the skin was still a bit raw in some areas. The stuffing however was moist, tender and flavoursome. Just a pity the skin ruined it all.
the slow roasted pork belly with seeded mustard, mash potato, apple vanilla purée and caramelised apple balls. The skin of the pork belly was nice and crispy and the pork itself was tender and moist. It went beautifully with the apple purée and the apple balls provided a sweetness to the dish.
Our mains were nicely priced at $ 39.
I ordered the beef fillet with potato fondant, parsnip purée and baby vegetables topped with stick red wine jus. It came to the table beautifully presented. But I felt the beef fillet was a little bland, there wasn’t even salt on it or pepper (and no cracked pepper was available for us!). The red wine jus wasn’t very flavoursome either and there wasn’t enough of the sauce to cut through the meat. The potato fondant wasn’t creamy enough and the outside lacked the nice brown crust. I was a little disappointed to say the least.
My other half ended up with the Roasted Noisette of Lamb, which was lamb cutlet (decent amount) with white bean purée, roasted fennel, enoki mushrooms and whole roasted garlic. The lamb was by far better than the fillet, although it did have that slight «lamb» smell. It was definitely tender and crunchy and flavoursome on the outer edges, but because of the thickness of the lamb, it needed a bit more flavours to be infused through the lamb.
However, for the two of us we weren’t very impressed but what we got. We were just glad we had the entertainment card on us to make it worth our while. I felt as though I would have gotten a better meal in one of the many other restaurants in the Valley.
Although all the dishes were beautifully presented.

Yummy food and great venue, apparently the perfect wedding venue. I just like their wine list :)