Vispo, George Street, Sydney

Vispo, George Street, Sydney
Tuesday 7 November, 2006

The Melbourne Cup lunch - these events can be great or dismal - it all depends on the group you are with. Today, we walked across the road to lunch at Vispo - they were having a Melbourne Cup event for $49 pp.

We arrived and were greeted like old friends (many of us are). Our table had pretty good viewing of the plasma screen TV that was set up on the bar for the big race. A glass of bubbly with fresh strawberries to kick off the proceedings and we were off.

We'd had a sweep organised in the office and Vispo had organised mystery trifectas for us all. To be honest I didn't even know who was in the race but it doesn't take long to get in the swing of things.

For entree we had the choice of:

- Sauteed King prawns wrapped in prosciutto with lemon wedges, served with fresh bread and finished with a traditional marie rose sauce
- Camembert & grilled asparagus crostini served on rocket & finished with lemon vinaigrette
- Smoked chicken salad with fresh mango, macadamia nuts & mixed leaf, finished with a sweet chilli dressing.

I opted for the smoked chicken salad - it was light, tangy and chock full of bits e.g. nuts, mango etc. I think this was the best pick of the three.

We had a trusty benefactor who took care of our drinks orders and had a selection of one red and two whites. Red please.

For main the choices were:

- Atlantic salmon fillet served with wilted baby spinach on a bed of creamy mash potato & finished with lime & dill hollandaise
- Scotch fillet steak served on dophinoise potato and sauteed wild mushrooms finished with red wine jus
- Grilled vegetable stack with mozzarella and drizzled with basil pesto

I chose the steak and requested it medium rare. Sadly, with the amount of steak ordered they were unable to accommodate individual orders so I ended up with a medium well steak. Whilst this wasn't a major inconvenience it would have been nice to have the steak I ordered.

We watched the race - no one won the trifecta -and were then served tea/ coffee and chocolates. This was great as it took the edge of all the alcohol. But then, the Manager delivered us some of his homebrew Limoncello - oh my god! There's goes the afternoon.....The best thing was we didn't have far to go afterwards - one road to cross.

Vispo - 210 George Street Sydney - (02) 9251 4117