A generous and varietal menu at Picasso’s

For a great dining experience and excellent meal, Picasso’s at the Carlton Crest is a sure bet.  Located in the heart of the action on King George Square, Picasso’s offers a multitude of choices, for both lunch and dinner, with their new summer menu, without a 20-page document to read through.
 
The restaurant is part of Brisbane’s biggest hotel “The Carlton Crest”.  It has the largest number of beds and function rooms and so it is always busy.

Picasso’s customers include in-house guests, city workers, shoppers and the business community and its open 7-days for lunch and dinner.
Recently mother and son visited Picasso’s for an early dinner after an hour or two of Christmas shopping and if you’ve ever shopped with a young adult male you also need sustenance, a stiff drink or a soothing coffee. Picasso’s has it all.

I chose a new dish from the “Entrée and Light Meals” section.  Some of these dishes are entrée sized, while others are more lunchtime dishes and certainly the dish I choose was a generous serve.  “Roasted chicken, tuna and warm potato salad” looked and tasted far better than it read.  An amalgam of roasted, marinated chicken thighs mixed with tiny, jacketed, roasted, southern, gold potatoes and tiny tim tomatoes all topped with slices of pepper crusted, seared Tuna.  The flavours delightful and the appearance spectacular.
 Another light meal or entrée dish on the new menu, which looked most impressive, was the “Skewered, crumbed scallops, pineapple and bacon with fresh mango relish on saffron rice”.  It was generous and artistically presented for $16.50; in fact, all the light meals were around the $16.00 mark.
 
I tasted a couple of different wines on the list available by the glass with the roasted chicken to determine which worked the best and found the Queensland wine, Ballandean Estate Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2003, had the right weight, length and richness to compliment the chicken tuna and potatoes.  I also tried the Hamilton Ewell Eden Valley Riesling 2003.  This wine is fresh and zesty: a great example of the 2003 vintage in the Eden Valley, lime blossoms and a crisp refreshing acidity.

This wine was brought out first and was a perfect match with the wood-fired Turkish bread, creamy spiced hummus, and a tangy bell pepper relish.  The balsamic and olive oil dip was moorish with the hot Turkish bread.   At $7.00, this is a wonderful starter or great to just enjoy with a glass of wine while you mull over the days events.

Picasso’s has a comprehensive range of wood-fired pizza’s that are certainly gourmet.  The “Peking duck and char siew (hoysin marinated) pork pizza with roasted peppers, shallots, mushrooms and Asian greens, topped with a mix of mozzarella, cheddar and parmesan” is a new line that is comparable with another five individual styles all priced around the $17.50 mark.

My young companion with a healthy and hearty appetite went straight to the section “From the Grill”.  Here’s where choice is limitless for the restaurant dinner. Grain fed, angus rump steak, pork cutlets with apple and cinnamon compote, kobi beef or coral trout are from the choice of 10 different grilled dishes and these can be combined with eight different sauces, six different potato dishes and four different side salad dishes, all priced between $19 and $29.

The choice my companion made was a 250g carpet bag eye fillet with Tasmanian oysters.  This he described as melting in the mouth, tender and tasty.  The oysters were fat and creamy, with robust flavours.  The sauce chosen was a pepper cognac which combined green, red and black peppercorns in a silky sauce.  The side dish of wok-tossed vegetables, included sugar snaps, snow peas, carrots, butter beans, green beans and asparagus. To completely fill the hollow stomach he added potato wedges with sour cream.

The different types and cuts of beef are becoming important to dinners.  We are no longer accepting of ‘beef and three vege’. We need to know if the beef is ‘grain fed’ or ‘grass fed’, ‘braham’ or ‘angus’, 30% or 50% marbled, and of course if its well-done, medium or rare. Also, vegetables are either steamed, or stir-fried, but, heaven forbid, never boiled. The choices are limitless and healthy.

I matched two wines with the grilled eye fillet and the Blue Pyrenees Cabernet Sauvignon from Central Victoria may have had the edge, available by the glass for $8.00.  This wine has a savoury black olive and roasted green capsicum character, typical of cold climate cabernet sauvignon, these flavours complimented the rich meaty flavours and the peppercorn sauce.  The wine had a silky tannin and a slightly sweet earthy finish.  The second wine had a much sweeter fruitier character and probably needed something more like the “Lamb shank, pesto, pumpkin, pinenut and mint with tomato or corn sauce” to show its best.  The wine, another Queenslander available by the glass, 2000 Sirromet Shiraz Cabernet, at $6.50, had great colour, warm blackcurrent, and sweet fruit, with a white pepper lift.

 I would never have gone there but my sugar deprived companion insisted on an examination of the dessert menu.

There were five items all at $8.50 and our choices were certainly decadent.  “Passionfruit, lime tart on citrus fruit salad”, with double cream was both soothing and cleansing and the glass of DeBortoli Noble One matched this dish to perfection.

 “The chocolate and banana crepes” were a work of art and fully-fledged feast.  White chocolate lace sat on top of a large crepe cut along the diagonal to reveal the bananas and white chocolate mousse, bright red strawberries glazed with a liqueur sauce perched on top of a large white plate.

This dish didn’t need another thing.  My companion proclaimed “sheer perfection”, as he polished off the last morsel.  Picasso’s is largely Australian modern cuisine with décor to match.  It is affordable and generous with a view and friendly, enthusiastic service.  There are currently around 20 wines available by the glass, which provide several wine and food matched options.