A-Oval Invaded by Pharmacy Students

Bonsoir my dear followers/readers, I have been extremely busy once again this past week, and will continue to be busy for the next coming few weeks, so please do forgive me for my minimal number of posts each week. I will try and post as many as I can (there are quite a number in the pipeline, waiting to be written up!).

Tonight's post is basically about an event which occurred last Saturday (10 September 2011). It was the Guild Annual Pharmacy Ball held by the South Australian Pharmacy Student's Association (or SAPSA). This year, it was held at the Adelaide Oval function centre in North Adelaide on War Memorial Drive. The newly renovated catering function centre looks quite nice, but the food on the other hand was debatable. We had a 3 course meal which is quite a standard format (food-wise) for the evening.

Here were the following dishes for the night:

Roasted pumpkin, leek & sage with black pepper & goats curd

Well, for soup starters are the standard for the ball (need to keep prices low as it is a student event after all). The description of the soup sounds absolutely divine, but the actual taste of it was well... "can-like" to put it in a mild way. It wasn't as thick as I would've liked it (which once again really depends on what people like so it is debatable), but the leek and sage could not be tasted at all. The pepper was evident (at least), but the goats curd was not...the white dash in the soup actually just tasted like ordinary cream, nothing too fancy. So the soup starter was a bit of a disappointment.

Frenched lamb cutlets with rosemary & garlic fondant potatoes, spinach strudel

This was an alternate drop to the chicken (which I cannot comment about as I received the lamb). The lamb cutlets were frenched really nicely and it wasn't overcooked which was good. However, the rest of the 'parts' of the dish was not really up to a very high standard. The potatoes did not have any garlic flavours whatsoever, and the spinach strudel was absolutely terrible — it was basically an extremely dry pie base with overcooked dry spinach sitting in the pie base, and according to them, is a spinach strudel... The tomato and broccoli actually also played no part in the dish. It was there really to make the dish look more colourful, but that actually 'cheapens' the quality of the dish that it could have been.

Eton mess: Vanilla cream, summer strawberries & crushed meringue

Well this was definitely one of the biggest failure of the night. As any close friends of mine would know, I have an extremely sweet tooth and I love sweets! However, I have never been more disappointed with an Eton mess. It can be such a simple dish to do well without being overcomplicated. The presentation looks absolutely lovely. However, the chefs need to seriously reconsider what they are writing in the menu and what they are actually presenting. There was no vanilla evident in the cream; the cream that was there was basically straight out of the container, not sweetened or flavoured with vanilla. It was just eating cream. The supposedly crushed meringue was actually not very crushed. Yes, fine the cream is not sweet and the meringue should sweeten it up, but its not going to do the job if there are only 2 button sized pieces of meringue in the whole huge cup of cream. The summer strawberries also didn't look like strawberries either. They were actually frozen berries. Sorry to be ridiculing this dessert but a more appropriate name for this would be Eton fail: carton of cream with frozen berries and 2 pieces of meringue buttons (at least it would be the correct description). 

So unfortunately, the caterers for this year was very disappointing. Not only was the food extremely average, but the presentation of the plates were so inconsistent. With the lamb cutlets, just from quick glances around the table and at other tables, the plating was horrific; some people had 2 pieces of tomatoes, others one, some with vines, some without...and then comes the broccoli - there were 2 pieces, 3 pieces, brown pieces of broccoli, 1 huge broccoli, and even NO broccoli for some. That was disappointing. Hopefully, the caterers do a better job for your functions in the future if you are looking for a venue, but based on my experience, I wouldn't recommend the venue if you need very decent food to be served (unless you only need a venue for a presentation or showcase and need some drinks and light meals to go on with).