Weekend Away - Ballarat Part 3

For dinner that night, we descended the grand staircase to the ground floor where we found the Craig’s Royal Hotel Restaurant. It was so much easier than finding a restaurant around town! No driving meant that there was no fighting over who would be the designated driver... The restaurant was beautiful! We were seated at our candlelit table by the very lovely and attentive staff. The service was indeed fantastic all night. 

Head Chef Shannon Easton leads the kitchen and this year Ian Curley has jumped on board as Executive Consultant Chef to reinvigorate the menu. In fact, Ian Curley strolled through the restaurant during our dinner... We ordered some wine to start off with, the Pyrenees Ranges Chardonnay ($10.00 per glass, $45.00 per bottle).

I decided to have an entree size serve of the ‘Homemade Black and White Linguini Marinara, with fish and shellfish ($22.00)’. I saw the main size version on another table which was massive! The seafood was plump and succulent. The two toned pasta was a wonderful dish both visually and on the palate.

Linguini Marinara

My travelling companion turned vegetarian on me and chose the ‘Rotollo of smoked ricotta, chard and pumpkin, sage and brown butter sauce ($28.00)’. This was also a very pleasant dish but could have been improved with a little bit of zing.  

Rotollo

Address: 10 Lydiard St, Ballarat, VIC

Phone: 03 5331 1377 

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In the morning, we ventured down again to the restaurant for a Continental buffet breakfast which was an inclusion of our room package. The buffet was very impressive with a range of poached fruits, yoghurt, pastries, cereals, and juices. After reading the morning paper and overindulging on the buffet, we said goodbye to Craig’s Hotel and set off for the Archibald’s...

Weekend away in Ballarat – Part 4 coming soon...


P.S. Did you catch Weekend Away – Ballarat Part 1 and Weekend Away – Ballarat Part 2?