Zen Bar - City, Brisbane

http://www.zenbar.com.au/ Dined: 12/08/08

For many years Zen Bar, for me, has been the same experience as the Gun Shop - great food, terrible (in fact woeful) service. Many a work lunch had me scurrying back to the office after gulping down my lunch at 5 to 2, sometimes having waited well over an hour for our meals.

Zen has been like that since I first started working in the city about 7 years ago but they seem to have finally turned the corner. The service of Tuesday was excellent and that's not a compliment I hand out lightly! Our servers were friendly without being obsequious, water and wine glasses were continually replenished and food was brought promptly.

The thing that has bought me back to Zen time and time again, even though the service was so appalling was the food. Not enough good things could be said about the chicken and prawn spring rolls, the duck pancakes, and the piece de resistance the chicken, spinach and cashew stir-fry. I think I can honestly say in 5 years I haven't ordered anything else. On Tuesday, it just wasn't up to par. I'll even have to damn it with faint praise and say it was "fine". Historically this dish was spicy, piquant, lush, rich and came with loads of cashews. This time it was just fine. Again, technically you'd be hard pressed to fault the dish but it just didn't have the usual magic that has me ready to lick the plate clean in a crowded restaurant.

Apparently there's an inverse relationship between service and food quality!

On a positive note, I hadn't ever seen the cheese platter before. I had skipped on the starter so decided to lash out with the cheese platter as quite a few of them seemed to be coming out of the kitchen. I do love cheese but am not much of a cheese snob but to my bourgeois taste, this was excellent. The crackers taste fresh and homemade, the dried fruits plump and the cheese a generous wedge (the choices were blue, cheddar or brie - I couldn't resist the brie). It was all beautifully presented and excellent value at $11.

I'm going to forgive Zen for the less than perfect stir-fry as they may have just been having a bad night but it's great to see the service so improved.

P.S. As per usual the pinot grigio delle venezie marano It 39.5 was lovely, 2 bottles lovely (there was 3 of us!).