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Trevor Pepys reviews Boardwalk Bistro on Hastings
You’ve almost got your feet in the sand at the front tables, but frankly, that’s the last place Trev wanted to be on a grey, grim and unseasonably cool late afternoon this week.
Still, we were cosy enough at a corner table as we surveyed the menu and the rain tumbled down outside. Trev’s always had a bit of a soft spot for the place formerly known as Berardo’s On The Beach, which was step two of Big Jim’s master plan to eponymously name every dining establishment on Berardo Street (sorry, Hastings Street).
Jim could occasionally be seen waddling down the street from Big Berardo’s to keep tabs on its little beachside brother, but mainly he let it run itself as a scaled down version of the fine dining around the baby grand that he offered at his other establishment. Of course, as some readers will recall, it all ended in tears when the Berardo empire came tumbling down, including the Noosa Food and Wine Festival, amid headlines and accusations, and Jim and partner Greg quietly slipped away to a new life under the Tuscan sun.
It’s been more than five years now since Shane Harvey, Jim’s operations manager at Food and Wine, and a heavyweight in the Hastings Street Association, took over the beachside place, renamed it Boardwalk Bistro and chilled it out a bit with a refit and a more relaxed menu. It had been a couple of years since Trev’s last visit, and he was pleased to see that business was brisk and the young waitstaff smiling and attentive. It had the immediate feel of, well, a bistro.
We ordered a bottle of the Inviniti Pinot Gris ($48) – a quite quaffable Marlborough drop and yes, a bit steep but you can see the sea, for God’s sake – and considered the menu.
Considering the view and the lightness of the wine, we decided to make our choices light and a bit fishy. Sticking with the entrée share plates, we ordered the seafood chowder ($22), the prawn tacos ($26) and a round of calamari ($26) with a bowl of chips ($9).
Trev should have ordered the chowder to arrive first, so we could slurp it around casually and not be concerned about the rest of the food getting cold. His bad, but the chowder turned out to be the star of the evening – a flavoursome blending of reef fish, mussels and scallops in a creamy sauce with olive oil on sourdough toast to mop it up. Yum.
There are a lot of decent seafood tacos on offer around town and Trev wouldn’t rate Boardwalk’s prawn taco top five. The smashed avocado, Asian slaw, mixed herbs, and house tartare sauce all tasted fine, but they left the soft shell a soggy mess, meaning it was easier to take the delicious prawn out and deal with it alone, attacking the rest as a salad. First world problems.
The common or garden calamari with Asian slaw, mixed herbs, lotus chips, and coconut caramel sauce was a pleasant surprise, the coconut caramel drawing out the flavours of the meat.
The verdict: A tasty light dinner in a great room, served with a smile. We’ll be back.
Boardwalk Bistro, On The Beach, 49 Hastings Street, Noosa. Phone 5448 0888.