RIVA
St.Kilda Marina
42b Marina Pde, Elwood VIC
03 9537 2224
www.rivastkilda.com.au

 

They say that the two best days in your life are when you buy a boat – and when you sell it. I think about that a lot when I visit Riva on the Marina and boat storage stack at the top end of St. Kilda.

You sit inside with a roaring fire in winter or sit outside with an ice bucket and a bottle of good, chilled, white wine in summer and you see the endless chores boaties go through at the end of a day on Port Philip Bay.

They stow sails, coil or tie down ropes, sluice the deck, stow the oilskins and life jackets and secure the boat as much as possible as the sun sets and the chilly wind from the bay cuts across moorings.

The petrol guzzlers are then either raised by crane into a boat stack or aimed at a submerged cradle attached to the car or ute that has been gingerly back down the slippery ramp for the tow home.

And while all this “Fun” work goes on we sit in the comfort of the Riva bar and restaurant and devour a huge Sunday lunch. I have mentioned winter meals at Riva before. Specifically their traditional winter roasts of lamb or beef or pork with crackling.

In that survey about roast dinners I said of Riva:

They now spruik their “winter Sunday roast”. It’s good value. They charge $22.50 for a “traditional Sunday roast with roasted baby potatoes, butternut pumpkin, garden peas and home style gravy”.

I liked their other line: With a glass of red and a roaring open fire, where else would you want to be on a cold, rainy, Sunday?”

And it is true. Sunday roasts bring back such cosy family memories. It WAS the biggest family meal of the week. We would listen to the Sunday Morning Hospital Request session on the wireless. And then came the roast with potatoes and pumpkin and kumara ( sweet potato) and parsnip.

 When they serve roast lamb at Riva I order “the bits the chef doesn’t usually serve” the over-cooked bits which are actually the best bits. With roast pork and apple sauce I order extra crackling. Well I did, until my low-salt diet and now it is too salty for me.

But Riva is much more than hearty traditional fare. Their latest menu is a gem.

My favourite entrée is the mud crab ravioli served with herbm crusted Hervey Bay scallops and butter on the shell. Their calamari rings (entrée or main) is served with a crispy noodle salad and wasabi mayonnaise. They use the Japanese horseradish liberally and well with a number of dishes. For example, the poached tiger prawn has ginger chips and palm sugar cured kingfish and cucumber salad with fresh grated wasabi.

 For other mains they do a pretty good crispy skin barramundi or schnapper  and my bastardised version of a Greek salad is, obviously my favourite. Whole caper berries with marinated strips of red capsicum and crumbled fetta cheese.  The real version has lots of lettuce plus tomatoes and Spanish onion.

But it is the dessert menu that is guaranteed to take you into orgasm territory. There’s a warm braised pear, calvados and walnut crumble with star anise ice cream. They have a huge platter of different desserts for two people. The current one is chocolate-themed with white chocolate and cardamom brulee, a chocolate sorbet, a chocolate terrine with pistachio praline and a black forest parfait. More than enough for two.

My favourite is the chocolate and sorbet selection. Truffle honey ice cream, rum  and raisin, hazelnut, fig. Occasionally they have the best ice cream taste ever with hokey pokey. Crunchy bits of  honeycomb are threaded through it and sometimes you’ll hit a vein of liquid taffey.

Riva is really three different places at different times of the week and day and night.  There’s a Wed- Fri lunch special for $24.90 that includes regular dishes like the calamari and steamed black mussels.  The mains include a duck risotto, crispy-skinned chicken or braised ox cheek.  The price also includes a glass of chardonnay or cab. Merlot.

I’ve talked about the big Sunday lunches but at night, especially Fridays and Saturdays the clever lighting and table candles turn it into an intimate place for a date.

But Sunday afternoons, in spring and summer, sitting on the deck or under an umbrella having linguine with prawn tails and “sipping a chardy” while watching those poor mug weekend sailors doing all that work is the best.

June 13, 2006