Artsy, hippy, really good! The VERVE

I haven't updated this blog for some time. Dorcas, my little sister, has been asking me about my lack of posts. She even suggested that I should compare home-cooked food and restaurant food if i wasn't eating out that often nowdaways. Hehe. Funny girl.Well, last Monday, I did have a good meal out. Ok...here goes.

The VERVE is on Edward St, in the basement of the Metro Arts Building. I used to rock up there at 10pm for 'graveyard shift' gigs. with my jazz-funk band. They paid us 20% of the bar tab and a few drinks. It was my first few steps into gigging.

It's a little, dimly lit place with many different paintings on the wall. The vibe is casual and quite hippy.

Later, I discovered that the food there was very interesting. It's basically Italian food with a twist.I've since eaten there a few times and it's been quite good. So here I am giving them free plug.

I was there last Monday night with Matt and Daniel Russell, 2 uni mates of mine. It was good catching up. We decided to order a traditional seafood chowder, an eggplant gnocchi, a lasagne, pork fillet with parmesan mash and rocket, and a chocolate slice.

CHOWDER

• It was very very good. Creamy soup flavoured with fresh herbs. It had chunks of fish, prawns, scallops and mussels in it. It was served with crispy, buttered herb bread. Thumbs UP!

EGGPLANT GNOCCHI

• It was served with an interesting Italian white cheese that's in little sticky balls. Matt is vegetarian, so he was pretty pleased. The flavour of the sauce was very unique. Not just generic tomato. I liked it. But I quite prefer some meat with pasta, or seafood.

LASAGNE

• This was rich, but quite standard

PORK FILLET

• The mash was excellent. The pork fillet was well grilled, and it was served with a plum sauce that was very nice and sweet. The rocket served with it gave it an extra tang.

CHOCOLATE SLICE

• It was more like a chocolate round cake. GORGEOUSLY soft and covered with really gooey, tempting sauce. It was warm and there was a scoop of vanilla ice-cream to go with it too. AH...loveliness.

I have found that with the Verve, as a rule of thumb, they serve good seafood and fish dishes, good pasta, and good pizza. Generally, the meat can be a bit dissapointing and generic. Their soups are also good. However, try to opt for the less creamy dishes as they can be a bit heavy on the palate and leave on feeling a bit stuffed.

I enjoyed it heaps this round thoough:)