Portsea Hotel: Lamaro’s on the Deck

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Disclosure: My guest and I dined courtesy of Portsea Hotel / Lamaro’s on the Deck and Kate & Co.

Wouldn’t it be nice to leave the city behind and head down the coast for summer? Particularly on these hot, hot days?

That’s exactly what the team from Lamaro’s, the restaurant in South Melbourne, did earlier this month. They snuck down the coast and took over the deck at the top of Portsea Hotel.


Bread

Down in the small town of Portsea on the southern most tip of the Mornington Peninsula, the Portsea Hotel has accommodation rooms, a bistro, an ala carte restaurant, and (as mentioned above) for the month of January: Lamaro’s on the Deck.

Lamaros on the Deck

And what a deck it is: covered, but with the ocean side open to the elements, and overlooking the water and the Portsea Pier. My friend Dany accompanied me to lunch, and this was our view – not bad, hey?

Zucchini flowers

Dany started with the polenta crusted zucchini flowers with ashed goats chevre and capsicum coulis ($19).

I declined to have a taste because goats cheese. Dany commented that it was very goaty, and that was a good thing (apparently).

Jar

My starter was the Build Your Own Gazpacho.

Actually, it was a gazpacho with grilled king prawns, wild cresses and fennel slaw ($17), which came cutely served in a jar.

Prawn gazpacho

Fortunately they also provided a bowl so I pulled everything out and poured the gazpacho over.

I enjoyed the gazpacho. It was very refreshing: the tomato soup had a slight hint of spiciness and garlic, which was nice with the sweet prawns and crunchy slaw and cress.

Rib eye

For mains, Dany was in a particularly carnivorous mood and ordered the 400g grain fed rib eye, which came with a few large cumin spiced onion rings and cafe de paris butter ($46). It looked pretty good.

Pork hock

While I choose the masterstock braised pork hock with apple and peanut slaw and spring onion relish ($34).

The pork hock was delicious, though the skin/outer was quite hard to cut through with my table knife. Once I got through it though, the skin was crunchy and salty, giving way to the braised meat.

Deep fried ice cream

I wouldn’t go past the peanut butter and jelly fried ice cream with mixed berry compote ($14) for dessert. Inside the crumb coating was peanut ice cream, laced with jam. So so good. I also really liked the crushed caramel pieces on the plate, though I left behind most of the berry compote because I was too busy concentrating on the ice cream.

Lamaros on the Deck

Overall, we had a very pleasant lunch on the Deck. It was definitely a very good way to while away a summer’s day.

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View Off the spork in a larger map

Lamaro’s on the Deck
Portsea Hotel
3746 Point Nepean Road
Portsea VIC 3944
Web: portseahotel.com.au and lamaros.com.au