Wayside Inn

Disclosure: Alastair and I dined courtesy of Wayside Inn.

Located on a stretch of City Road that doesn’t seem to have much else around it, Wayside Inn was taken over late last year by the team behind Station Hotel. Being a big fan of Station Hotel (see posts here and here) I was pretty keen to check it out. And so when I was invited a bloggers dinner there before Christmas with stickifingers, Claire and Gem, I was a happy gal indeed.


While the big brother, Station Hotel, is well known for steak, the Wayside Inn’s focus is more towards meat and seafood.

Each day there’s a different meat from the rotisserie. On the current menu, Mondays is chicken, Tuesday is goat (!), Wednesday is venison with red fruits, Thursday is lamb, Friday is suckling pig (!), Saturday is corn fed duck, and Sunday is rib of beef. In addition, there are $12 counter meals from Monday – Saturday and oyster happy hours (6 oysters and a drink for $14) every day between 3.30pm-5.30pm. Talk about value.

And as for seafood, our meal started with a great selection of the seafood dishes. First out was a collection of oysters (priced at between $3.50-$5.50 each, depending on the variety).

My eyes widened when I saw the huge seafood platter, the plateau de la mer royale ($48), that came with mussels, scallops, clams, prawns, crab meat, octopus, smoked salmon, Moreton Bay bugs and samphire. With so much variety and freshness, I think this could be Melbourne’s best value seafood platter.

There was octopus with chorizo, olive oil and Pedro Ximenez ($12.50).

And Harris smoked salmon, which came with blinis ($15).

And finally, the seafood theme ended with a plate of rather good sashimi grade yellowfin tuna that was doused in pink peppercorns, apples and verjuice.

After all that food, we took a long break – thank goodness! Then the mains came out. We had corn fed duck with roast peaches ($34). Now I’m not a huge duck fan, nor a big fan of meat and fruit, but this was quite good – the duck was cooked really well and the peaches did complement the meat.

But wait, there was more. Much more, in fact. There was beef. A kilo of beef… I can’t remember which cut it was now. But it was about a kilo – and yes, we ate most of it. πŸ˜€

Mains were accompanied by several sides – a simple but delicious salad of heritage tomatoes, a little pot of roasted vegetables, and really good hand cut chips (all a reasonable $5).

I was very full after mains, but snuck a bite of the desserts. There was a sweet and wobbly vanilla panna cotta with raspberries ($12).

A simple dessert of Yarra Valley berries, cherries and yoghurt sorbet ($12). I really love the simplicity of this dessert, particularly since I generally avoid desserts nowadays.

Not as simple but also utilising cherries was the cherry and almond tart with vanilla ice cream ($12)

And finally, I missed out on trying this one, but here’s the Valrhona chocolate marquise served with poached apricots ($12).

Like I said earlier, I love the Station Hotel, so I wasn’t surprised to find that I really liked the food at Wayside Inn. We had a great dinner and were very spoilt.

And you know what? Writing this post is making me want to head back. I might have to convince Alastair that we should head back this weekend. I doubt he will need much convincing!

Update: we went to Wayside Inn for lunch the day after I posted this. πŸ™‚

For more on Wayside Inn, check out the following blogs:

  • Let’s get fat together
  • Barley blog
  • The Learner Chef
  • Foodie about town
  • Uh oh daisy


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    The Wayside Inn
    446 City Road
    South Melbourne
    Phone: 9682 9119
    Web: waysideinn.com.au

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