Aquila - Brisbane City

Dined 6/4/09

Aquila, Aquila, Aquila. What you have done to the humble chicken Caesar almost defies description.

Every element of this tangy, delicious salad was destroyed in a serious bout of mediocrity.

At $14.90, I could have had the crispy chicken at McDonald's twice over and received a better meal.

The worst part is, you're normally so good. You scrambled eggs are delightfully fluffy, your bacon so crispy, the lamb pizza resplendent, your coffee spoken of in reverent tones.

But this was a soggy mess of non-descript muck.

For me, the heart of the Caesar salad is the dressing. There wasn't even the faintest resemblance to the traditional tangyness in this salad. There was no Parmesan wafting lazily on top, rather it was swimming around the bottom of the plate in the white muck of the sauce. The bacon appeared to be of the same standard used on $5 take-away pizzas. This horrible mixture was held together by chopped up pieces of boiled egg...this sentence cannot sufficiently describe why boiled egg doesn't belong in Caesar salad; coddled if you must, but not boiled.

The tasteless, if tender strips of chicken where one of the few saving graces. The use of two pieces of grilled sourdough(?) rather than croutons an affront to a purists heart.

I should however put this in the Fussy perspective. My dinning companion thought his was just fine and definitely isn't wallowing in disappointment like I am.

The best part of the salad was the LLB - delicious and comes in a huge glass and at $3.90 a bargain.

Aquila, for me, is becoming one of those places where the trick is to know what to order. For those unaware the results can be very disappointing.

Food excellence 0/5
Ambiance 3.5/5
Cleanliness 4/5
Price 3/5