Otto (yet again)

I seem to keep going to Otto...it's been three times in 2 months now! We celebrated a colleague's birthday there yesterday, and we all had the set lunch ($38 for 3 courses and coffee/tea). Not sure how often they change the menu, but it was different from the previous month's.

First up, the wonderful assortment of bread. I had olive, walnut and onion bread. Forgot to mention earlier that they use really good olive oil.

My colleague had the soup of the day, which was fennel. It was surprisingly good (then again, I've never tried fennel soup before)
The amuse bouche was gratinated mussel.

I ordered the starter of seven minute egg with chicken and morel mushroom raviolini and bacon bits. This was really good. I loved the runny egg. Not sure what they put into the stock, but I'm sure there were mushrooms involved, with a bit of cream.

The raviolini was really interesting. It wasn't pasta, but some sort of gelatinous stuff encasing the mushroom mixture. This was probably the best dish of the set.

For my main course, I ordered the braised lamb shank served with soft polenta. This was really quite ordinary (and therefore a bit disappointing). Compared to the lamb shanks I made in Melbourne 3 months ago, which were wonderfully fresh and tasty with no gamey smell, this could have been better - the meat didn't taste all that fresh.
Two of my colleagues had the snapper fillet with sun dried tomato crust and white wine sauce. I had a bite and thought this would have been a better choice compared to the lamb, even though I'm not a fish fan. I regretted not getting the pasta instead, which was ricotta cheese and spinach ravioli with sage and butter sauce.

There were 2 dessert choices. One colleague had the ice cream....

...while everyone else had the tiramisu!

The tiramisu was not too bad. Ordinary, but not in a bad way. It was a good ending to the meal.

The coffee was good, thick and strong. Enough to wake us up for an afternoon of paperwork : )