Restaurant review – Beach Bistro

I get a lot of feedback and requests to visit particular restaurants, but by far the most are about Beach Bistro.
This Westbrook restaurant is about 400m past the main beach. At first glance the venue is a bit dated and drab but the food really made up for it.
The menu includes quite a few old classics; for starters I had the deep fried Camembert with cranberry sauce. The plating was outstanding but I would have liked to see a bit more sauce, and the Camembert could have been deep fried a little longer to get a bit of colour or deep fried at a higher temperature. Other than that, it was a great interpretation of this iconic dish.
For main I had the roasted pork belly special with braised cabbage and mashed potato. The pork was done beautifully with super crisp crackling and seemed to be stuffed with a few aromatics, which gave it a wonderfully rounded flavour, and, it was very tender and juicy. The braised cabbage was a wonderful accompaniment.
We also enjoyed a smoked chicken and mushroom gnocchi*, which is where things get complicated. My dining partner found the gnocchi a bit tough compared with most gnocchi, but I, on the other hand, enjoyed it, with rich smoky undertones from the chicken, a touch of earthiness from the mushrooms and all combined into a beautiful creamy sauce.
We finished of our meal with a really good quality cappuccino and whiskey Dom Pedro. The venue itself isn’t quite my cup of tea but the view and the food will certainly see me back there.