Jorg

Friday night December dinner and Steve makes reservations at Jorg in Fitzroy North. It's an attractive building and fit out and feels nice and spacious. We are greeted and shown to our table and made to feel comfortable. The two waitresses work hard all night topping up drinks, taking orders, waiting tables...and they do it pretty efficiently and remain good tempered!

We start off with an assortment of small bites of goodness:

• Baccalá fritters with house aioli
• Nico serrano jamon
• Crispy zucchini flowers, potato and ricotta stuffing, golden squash and leek fondue
• Tuna crudo, radicchio, blood orange and fennel salad and aioli

I remember enjoying them all but 3 weeks later struggle to remember what they were like exactly. I don't think anything was terrible and I remember eating every scrap so that's got to say something!

We decided to share a meat dish and a pasta dish and swap plates halfway through. Our choices were:

• Pan roasted lamb rump, char grilled cutlet, smoked shoulder, asparagus and spiced nuts
• Cavatelli, arrabiata sauce, pancetta lardons and provolone

We were underwhelmbed by the lamb. The sauce was a it over reduced, there weren't enough spiced nuts to make a difference. The lamb was pink enough and tender but it didn't smack of stellar amazingness.

However the pasta was darn good. Slightly chewy but in a pleasant way, cavatelli with an intense tomato sauce and cheese with some bacon and some hear. It was delicious. Where the lamb under delivered, this exceeded expectations.

We had enough in us to contemplate dessert and I went with the lemon option and Steve the souffle.

• Raspberry soufflé with raspberry sorbet and raspberry coulis
• Stone fruit, berries, italian lemon cake, lemon fool and meringue

The souffle was less like eating clouds and more like eating pancake batter. It wasn't bad but we've had better and lighter and more rise. The sorbet was very good though.

The lemon option was certainly lemony and I enjoyed the creamy fool and dense cake along with some fruits and then the odd teeny piece of meringue. I think I'd have liked more meringue crumbs and the fool itself was quite heavy so not quite the light Summery option I thought it could be. However I enjoyed the flavours.

Jorg is a pleasant neighbourhood restaurant. It's pleasing enough but perhaps not as memorable as other places.