Easter Chocolate Menu at Vivant!

Well, we caved in! Mr Cake thought it was a good idea and anyone who knows me will know that turning down chocolate is not something I'm in the habit of doing. 

We had booked but it was pretty quiet when we arrived anyway, though it did get quite busy before too long. We had already pretty much decided which options to go for, and once we had placed our order we didn't have to wait long for the food.

We both chose to have the Cajun chicken salad with green salad and white chocolate aioli as our entree. The chicken was fantastic, beautifully seasoned. We actually both thought the spices were a bit reminiscent of the Colonel's 11 secret herbs and spices - but much nicer (I hope you can imagine that as a nice flavour, because it really was)! The salad was nicely balanced, and the white chocolate aioli was really tasty and went really well (somewhat to my surprise, I have to admit). We both scraped our plates clean even though it was a pretty large serving.

My main was pan friend Warehau (a New Zealand fish) with white chocolate mash and spinach, raspberry and hazelnut salad. The fish was a bit dry but the mash was quite nice - odd to have the sweet flavour coming through but it was still good. The salad was nice though nowhere near as good as the entree, and the raspberry was deliciously tangy but I couldn't detect any hazelnut.

Mr Cake had the sirloin steak with gratin potato, watercress, onion jam and dark chocolate jus. The steak was fairly average - not wonderfully cooked and the dark chocolate definitely wasn't a featuring ingredient. The gratin went down pretty well but overall this meal got a resounding 'meh' from Mr Cake. Ah well - next is dessert!

Chocolate trilogy with berry coulis, chocolate ice-cream and biscotti - it was nice, just nice. The 'trilogy' was moussy and nice, but not actually very chocolatey, and you definitely couldn't distinguish the different layers. The base was nice and spongey, not too rich. The biscotti was coated in chocolate just to emphasise the theme and the chocolate ice-cream was lovely and creamy (if a bit melty by the time we got it).

All in all it was a nice meal and pretty reasonably; $42 per person for three course plus a glass of Lindauer. And kudos to the chef who took on the challenge of incorporating chocolate into every course!



Vivant! restaurant is located at 153 Featherson Street, Wellington, New Zealand, ph (04) 496 1880