I frequently see racks and dinners from friends at this place, and when I happened to go to Bondi on a whim and got a bit hungry; Hurricane's seemed like a good place for us to go. I've also heard strange things from J, who insists that Bondi Hurricane's is better than Darling Harbour Hurricane's. I'm not sure if I really understand that logic, but I suppose I'll go with it, given that I haven't tried the Darling Harbour gig.
And with that intro, I might actually do some legit food blogging..not sure if this'll go down well *cue food blogging jargon
For starters, the
salt and pepper calamari was good, but it was a bit too battery and I feel like it needed some spices seasoned on it or something to add some pow. It may just be that I love the salt and pepper calamari at Meat and Wine Co. really badly, so everytime I eat s&p squid, that's what I keep comparing it to.
The garlic mushrooms were also pretty good too, but a bit too buttery and garlic-y for my taste. I'm not a big garlic fan and wow kapowza there was a lot of garlic in those mushrooms. Maybe I like button mushrooms better? Not sure, I think this was a hit or miss for me and well..it was a miss this time around.
Mixed Salad: where can you really go wrong in a mixed salad? Fresh + great (despite the little mountain of alfalfa sprout-doom)
For the mains, J and I shared between a full rack of pork ribs (far too ambitious) and a 350g rib eye steak.
The pork ribs, the most popular dish at Hurricane's were ok but that may just be that I'm not a huge meat person. The meat slid off the bone quite easily, and the speciality sauce that Hurricane's marinates its ribs in was very tasty; but there was something about the ribs that didn't have me incredibly hooked and wanting more. The 'Monkey Gland' sauce was very sweet though - side note for future or anyone heading out to Hurricane's: you don't need a sauce at all if you order the ribs.
The rib eye steak was also fairly well cooked, but again, I wasn't the biggest biggest fan. First of all the meat was cooked to Medium, because J can't take my usual preference of Medium-Rare steaks. Second, it's unfortunate that I've just come home from Japan, aka the land of ridiculously tender and juicy wagyu. Although maybe by Australian standards the meat was 'tender and juicy', it really isn't up to par with the type of steaks we were eating in Japan. Not sure how I feel about this to be honest. The mushroom sauce was great though (when is it ever not though?)
The restaurant itself was very noisy and rowdy, but it's exactly the type of place where loud exclamations and outbursts of laughter between good friends can exist without getting judgemental heads turning your way every few often. Service was very good as well: J was running extraodinarily late, and even though I insisted for them to give our table away and just give us the next available one after it; they led us in and left us to our memorising of the menu. Food was prompt, waitress was ridiculously friendly and joked around with us for a bit.
I don't think I'll be back to Hurricane's anytime soon. Maybe for a drink (but from what I saw the drink menu was heavily overpriced for a poor person like me), or a salad or something small and not involving too much meat, but in a sense that defeats the purpose of going to Hurricane's. Maybe I've just realised that I'm not a big ribs and steak 'type of 'gal'. Who knows? I still see friends rushing off to Hurricane's, and the place was very very crowded; with people still going in at 9PM to start their meal, so they must be doing something right.
