Newmarket Hotel - MELBOURNE

Address: 34 Inkerman St, St Kilda, Melbourne

Cuisine: Spanish Tapas

Mushroom Ratings:

Food: 8.5/10

Value: 5/10

Service: 7/10

Ambiance: 9/10

From the outside, this place looked like a shoddy broken pub, but this was quite deceiving after we walked in. Newmarket offers a range of delicious Spanish tapas at quite a high price range, and a trendy indoor/outdoor seating area.

Pictured: Outdoor seating of Newmarket

Pictured: Soft Shell Crab Taco

Pictured: Prawn Taco

For starter dishes we ordered from a part of the menu called “street food”. We chose a prawn taco (left) and a soft shell crab taco (above). They were as delicious as they look, but for $17 a taco, they came out a lot smaller than initially expected. In three bites, I finished the palm-sized taco, but it was the guacamole sauce that had me craving more. The flavours were strong as they were colourful, and something different to try, even though they were not very filling.

Pictured: Soft Shell Crab Taco

Our second dish (bottom left) was the BBQ Chorizo sausage ($18) with a sweet almond nut sauce. This was devine. The sausage was grilled perfectly with a sweet caramelised taste to it. It coupled perfectly with the sweet almond sauce. I would definitely recommend this! I also chose a side-dish of wild mushrooms (pictured bottom right).

Pictured: BBQ Chorizo Sausage

Pictured: Wild Mushrooms

Pictured: Rib Fillet steak

The main dish for the night was the Rib Fillet steak. The 300g steak was very sweet and full of flavour juices. My only complaint being it was a tiny bit on the chewy side. For a steak, this was very decent and it went very well with the sauce, which had a bit of wasabi flavour (?) to it and went very well with the steak. I would also highly recommend this dish, even though I prefer wagyu at Maha (review coming soon).

Pictured: Sangria

For drinks, there was no question that I chose sangria. As expected it was tropical, sweet, fresh and intoxicating. The prices were quite steep at $17 a glass or $35 a jug, so we chose the jug for better value. Although the Sangria was good, I still prefer the MoVida version slightly better.

All up, the dinner cost $135 for 2 persons.  Some dishes were a bit steep for its sizing but we were full and were not disappointed by the unique culinary skill of the chef. The atmosphere was trendy and not too loud (unlike Movida). The tapas were very flavoursome and unique, but I still prefer the larger range of tapas offered by MoVida.