In a previous life, I worked at certain restaurant whose owner also happened to be that of The Panama Dining Room. For this reason, mainly, I’ve been trying to drag myself over there to investigate the new space. After having read numerous reviews about the place, inclusive of the one listed in The 2008 Good Food Guide (The Age), I finally popped in for a bite to eat with my partner last week to celebrate our Valentine’s Day (one day prior due to conflicting work schedules).
Once you make the trek up a few flights of stairs, the doorway opens up into this very chic warehouse space that you feel like you’re somewhere in New York. I lived in Panama for 4 (glorious) years and find the name to be quite suitable for the space, despite the fact that you won’t find any South American dishes on the menu. Front of house staff welcomed us to the place immediately, and while they were supposedly booked solid for the night (Valentine’s Day eve), they offered a rather nice seat at the long communal tables fitted with chairs that were high enough to make you feel a bit like royalty. We chose the seats at the end of table and started pouring over the wine menu and later the food menu. We settled on a $20-something bottle of Spanish tempranillo, which was decent, but decidedly not as tasty as other tempranillos we’ve sampled.
After a glass of wine, we settled on Chilled Yogurt and Cucumber Soup with cinnamon pastries ($12, vegetarian) and the Crumbed Pork Cutlet with a juniper berry dressed salad ($26, definitely not vegetarian). I’ve never had a yoghurt soup, but besides feeling like I was downing a bowl of tzatziki dressing, the sprinkling of paprika and bits of toasted, crushed pistachios made the soup taste well-rounded. It was sweet, smoky, tart and somewhat refreshing. The phyllo pastries were pleasant, especially when dipped into the soup. While I can’t comment much on the pork cutlet, I will say it was a safe dish, as you can’t really go wrong with fried pork. The side salad was peculiar with its juniper berry dressing; it tasted more like someone was drinking on the job and had a “happy accident”. I felt that the dressing needed something savoury to counteract the tartness of the juniper berries…such as pork jus or even miso. We both enjoyed our food, but weren’t blown away by it.
There is one vegetarian option for both entrees and mains. I decided against the vegetarian main because it was a pasta dish (ravioli) and in my book, vegetarian pasta dishes as main show a lack of imagination on the kitchen side — even if it’s made on the premises. The sides included two vegetarian salads, one of which was a quinoa salad; that’s a grain you don’t see much on menus these days. We opted not to get dessert only because the majority of them were chocolate-based and I don’t do chocolate, not even on Valentine’s Day.
1 bottle of wine, 1 entree and 1 main came to a grand total of $65. The food was OK, the wine menu was fairly vast, but the space was absolutely amazing. We both agreed we’d go back again, but sit at the bar and order from the bar menu, which features a lot of creative tapas, many of which are vego friendly.
Vegetarian friendliness: Average
Atmosphere: Exceptional
Value for money: Average, entrees average $12, main average $26
Staff behaviour: Very good
The Panama Dining Room
Level 3, 231 Smith Street Fitzroy
