The Aviary restaurant is placed in the city centre of Perth’s high street. It’s located upstairs and looks out onto the shops below. Very convenient but I can’t help but wonder there must be a better place for this to be. We sat facing out and watched as the local youths do what they do when the sun goes down, entertaining for a short while but unfortunately after the third police car in twenty minutes it became quite apparent we went walking that way back to the car.
I was in the mood for cocktails, and I tried the Passionfruit Caprioska which was delightful, so delicious that I decided to try another of the menu; a Spiced Pear Amaretto Sour. Not as tasty as the first but still quite tasty and Lee had a Corona.
We wanted to sample a few dishes, so we started with the Wok Tossed Edamame, they were very spicy with an incredibly firm outer shell. Quite expensive for what you get really but the fried onions were quite nice.
The next dish was Fried Chicken, it was delicious and possibly my favourite dish we ate at the Aviary, it had this crispy skin but perfectly moist in the middle a great portion too, somewhat sweet and a little difficult to eat with chopsticks as the pieces were quite large.
Then we had the Pork and Ginger Dumplings. The broth was spicy, and the dumplings themselves were great, I especially liked the black salt on top as it made for a great contrast.
Something begged the question, though, why only 3, why not 2 or 4 especially if sharing the dish! Our waitress made a point of saying the whole menu was designed to be shared but why only provide, three of an item when there’s two of you? Hmmm
Peking Duck Pancakes. We thought it was a bit weird to have mint and chilli on the platter, but it worked. We had pancakes but not enough filling for them all which was a bit annoying and no before you ask, we used the mixture sparingly but still, it just wasn’t enough. It was a great touch to use a basting brush to paint your sauce on the pancake; we thought it was quite a novel idea.
Sweet and Sour Pork. Again only three pieces again which was still puzzling if we are sharing between two! Unfortunately, the pork pieces were too heavy to pick up with chopsticks, and we got much more salad than pork. The pork had a sweet taste and was delicious but with no dressing on the salad, it was very plain.
That was our mains, now on to our puddings;
The Dark Chocolate Pave Mousse was lovely, not overly sweet and the compote of jam was nice.
We thought I. Was quite unusual with the sesame seed, but it worked well.
However, the Spiced Apple Crumble I’m sorry but it was weird, I’ve never had a Japanese crumble before and I don’t think I will again. It had shredded spiced apple with uncooked oats topping. The ice cream didn’t taste of anything it was bright green, however, possibly to eminent wasabi but it certainly didn’t taste like it. I found the crumble to be slightly too hard, and it just didn’t hit the spot.
Finally, it was the White Chocolate Parfait. The parfait was more like an ice cream in consistency; the sorbet was refreshing to the palette as the parfait became quite sickly the more you ate it, unfortunately. Also, they brought us a large spoon that didn’t fit in the small pot, silly little thing but by this time I was very underwhelmed by the desserts.
Was it value for money? To be honest, it was very expensive for what you get here; I hate saying it but unfortunately, our experience didn’t meet our expectations.
It was a very stylish place and was clearly a bar to find the young elite of pPerthof an evening; the restaurant was packed, and we had to get past the bouncers to get in to eat.
Our waitress was a unique one; she asked if we wanted cutlery instead of chopsticks (we explained that we were going to try and eat with chopsticks all evening) she then replied oh right, generally if someone asks for cutlery, she says no because it’s a Japanese restaurant. Wtf I honestly couldn’t believe it, we had only been sitting down for five minutes, and it turns out our waitress is an elitist. Blimey! It kind of set a tone for the evening, though.