Alpha, Sydney CBD ($$)

Address: 238 Castlereagh Street Sydney NSW

Tel: (02) 9098 1111

Website:

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Upon my return from Sri Lanka and Singapore, MDS and I organised a dinner to catch up on all the goss and happenings of the past three weeks.

We decided to give Alpha a go as we had been wanting to try it out for a while.

I emailed the restaurant to try to make a booking for 5.30pm, but received a response saying that they only open at 6.00pm and were booked out that night (a Thursday). They mentioned that they leave the bar seats open for walk-ins and suggested we give that a go.

MDS and I had a drink at Strattons nearby and then headed over to Alpha to grab a seat at the bar.

Atmosphere

The exterior is fresh and elegant with the blue and white facade reflecting the beautiful buildings of the same colours in Greece. As the restaurant is new, everything has that lovely clean and modern look and the furniture also reflects this with resort-style modern cane chairs, big cushions and plenty of marble and stone accents.

MDS and I both thought the restaurant was tastefully decorated and the bar area with bottles of alcohol and jars of olives and pickled lemon added some colour and excitement to the space.

Service

Service was fantastic.

From the minute we sat down our waiter was helpful, friendly and polite.

We started off with our fave, LLBs.

He explained to us that the amount of food we had ordered might be a little too much as the Spanakopita was quite a large dish, and he suggested we order one less item.  I have never had a waiter say that to me before as it is usually in the interests of the restaurant for guests to order more. Needless to say we appreciated his honesty and his advice proved to be true as we still had some Spanakopita left over after ordering one less item!

Food came out quickly and we had a uneventful meal.

Food

We ordered a number of dishes to share.

To start off, we had the Pita Bread ($2.00 per person) with Taramosalata ($10.00).

The Pita was soft, slightly garlicky, and drizzled lightly with olive oil. It was delicious, and much better than the pita we had at Xanthi in Westfields.

Next was the Ouzu Ocean Trout ($11.00).  We didn’t really read the menu properly and when the dish came out as raw fish, MDS was a bit reluctant to try it as she isn’t a raw fish person.

Fortunately the fennel, sumac onions, grapefruit and pomegranate freshened up the dish a bit and MDS was able to try the trout and salad together. She said she didn’t mind it too much.

I really enjoyed the fresh and smooth trout and the crunchy fennel salad.

Next up were the Soutsoukakia Greek Meatballs ($11.00) with red wine, tomato and cumin.

They came presented in a small bowl with three long meatballs covered in a thick sauce and topped with fresh herbs. MDS commented that there wasn’t enough sauce for the meatballs, and I agreed.  We both enjoyed them nonetheless as the meatballs were tender and flavoursome with a strong cumin taste.

We ordered a Spanakopita ($16.00), a traditional Greek spinach and feta pie.

The Spanakopita takes about 25 minutes to come out as it is baked upon order. We knew this when we ordered and were OK with it as we could enjoy the other dishes first.

The dish was well presented in a cute little flat (and very hot) pan.  It had a beautiful crispy and golden crust and the filling was the perfect proportion of spinach and feta with a good amount of salt.

MDS and I both had two pieces each and would have had more if we could have fit it in 🙂

Overall, Alpha is a great new venue, perfect for business or pleasure with its modern and elegant interior and excellent service.

Rating:

I would rate my experience (out of 10):

• Service- 8.5
• Food- 8
• Ambience- 8
• Value – 7.5