Tonik

The other weekend we headed to Tonik with our regular dining pals, Benisa (Ben + Lisa) plus Nathan. Tonik is a bar located in Kensington Village, which does some rather good food. It feels very cosy inside, with couches and an open fire place on one side of the room and tables on the other. At the back is the bar, along with a staircase that leads upstairs where more tables are located.

We started with the Tonik Tasting Plate – "a selection of delicately prepared morsels designed to share" ($12.50 per person with a minimum of 2 people). Menu descriptions makes me chortle sometimes! Anyhoo, sometimes when I order a "tasting plate" I get disappointed because what comes out is mostly dips and bread. This wasn't the case with this one! I was quite impressed by what we received. There were two little cups of a curried lentil soup, two beef skewers, polenta chips, calamari, roasted mushrooms, pita bread and tzatziki. The calamari, polenta chips and mushrooms were particularly good.



For mains, Ben and I both had the potato gnocchi covered in a creamy blue cheese and broccoli sauce finished with rocket and toasted walnuts ($17.90). I've been in a gnocchi mood lately – and the gnocchi at Tonik were pretty good. It was a mild blue cheese sauce, creamy and rather tasty. But I got a bit tired of the rocket after a while, it was fairly bitter and I had loads!



Alastair had the other gnocchi option – the pork and veal meatballs, cooked in a spicy tomato ragout ($17.90). It's hard to go wrong with meatballs in a tomato sauce!



Lisa had the chicken mushroom, leek & juniper berry 'pot pie' with sour cream flaky pastry and iceberg salad ($21.00). Lisa's meal was massive – almost bigger than her!



After our meals, Alastair and I shared a dessert. I know how much he loves sticky date pudding, so that's what we had, a big slab of it sitting in butterscotch sauce ($10.50). I let him eat most of it.



Benisa shared the self saucing chocolate pudding laced with brandy and accompanied with ice cream and fresh cream ($10.50). It looked super pleasingly gooey inside.

During the week, Tonik does some bargain dinners. On Mondays there's $6 pizzas, and Wednesdays is steak and a beer for $12. I can recommend the steak and beer evening - it's a good, inexpensive way of celebrating the middle of the working week.

Tonik
524 Macaulay Road
Kensington
Phone: (03) 9376 9928