Coda

First visit to Coda. Thoroughly enjoyed an absolutely delicious, fun birthday dinner. Top notch food quality and unique flavours - the seafood dishes and Nashi pear pavlova were winners ! 😋 Although we would have preferred a table we still enjoyed our dinner at the bar. Thank you to bartender Phillipe for the birthday cocktail ! 🍹😊

Housed off Oliver Lane you’ll find Coda, another venture by Chef Adam D’Sylva, the same guy behind Tonka. Coda offers up Euro-Vietnamese dishes that are intended to be shared. The menu is wide, the drinks list is extensive (and delicious I might add). The venue itself is dimly lit, has gorgeous ceilings, and music pumping through. The star of the show was by far the Kingfish sashimi. The flavours incorporated were sour, spicy, tangy, savoury - we couldn’t get enough of it. And the cuts of fish were a great thickness and size, making for substantial bites. The prawn betel leaves were good, slightly aromatic and made salty with the accompanying soy sauce. Oysters were sour but savoury, tasty albeit being on the smaller side. The tempura bugs were a good size, a lovely light batter, a good amount of juicy meat. However adding both the soy and the chilli salt became too salty so only a small amount is needed of each. The mozzarella was nothing special, again the pesto was on the salty side, but the carrots were beautifully sweet. The pork cutlet was a decent portion for the two of us, the cuts were nice and thick and meat was super tender and not too fatty. The flavour of the pork itself though was underwhelming - the only prominent flavour was the charred crust. The tomatoes had soaked up most of the flavour which, when eaten with the pork in one bite, elevated it. Flavours weren’t mind-blowing, but at least they were there. The fries were good, nicely salted, we would’ve preferred if they were fried for a little longer as some were softer than others and needed a better crunch. Dining on a Saturday night you can expect it to be busy, but we found that the service was quite slow, we noticed the tables around us being made to wait a while, prompting for some diners to raise the issue to staff. Perhaps there was a staffing issue on this night as they appeared to be under the pump. There has to be a degree of mercy given to the hospo industry at the moment. Overall, a great fine-dining restaurant. The sashimi is what blew us out of the park, everything else was tasty and fresh but not incredible. I’m not sure how I feel about putting European and Asian food together on one menu though. Still worth a visit.

We had a lovely dinner at Coda over the long weekend, service was great and food came out pretty quickly. We really enjoyed the salmon gravlax, duck liver puff and our fave dish, the hot numbing lamb with a side of roti. We ordered the fromage blanc sorbet for dessert and it was light and refreshing, great way to end the meal. For mains, we ordered the pork cutlet and the prawn fried rice, the pork cutlet was cooked really well, tender and juicy but it was quite salty for us and the cut we were served was too fatty in our opinion. The prawn fried rice was tasty but nothing special. Overall, it was a great meal and would definitely come again to try the other mains and desserts!

Incredible meal with 7 guests at Coda. Every dish was faultless which is rare in a set menu environment like we had. The service was impeccable and staff attentive. A very nice touch was that we had some visitors from Sydney and we were able to call ahead to the restaurant and organise some special bottles off their list to be put aside. Speaking of wine, what a great list! Good combo of top Australian wines with some great French ones mixed in too. I will be back. Delicious.