hibiscus restaurant and bar - 167 st georges road north fitzroy 9497 8101

it's a big bloody flower. an hibiscus. or it's a new restaurant and bar opened only 8 weeks ago in fitzroy north. what have the two got in common? unknown. but the restaurant variety has really good food, good waiters (except for the scary one with the multi-accent) and good wines. the flower variety smells good.

your normal north fitzroy restaurant has loud, crazy waiters, surrounded by grungy sofas from grandma's garage sale. usually you can't see what you're eating and wines with labels and corks (not screw top or plastic taps) are a recent discovery. it's not that we don't love fitzroy and it's eateries. sometimes you just want soup sans dreadlocks.

someone has repotted hibiscus (restaurant variety, keep up you idiot) from south yarra or the city to north fitzroy. hibiscus charges $10 to open your byo wine. it's not that they are specifically challenged and it takes a long time. nor do they particularly suffer rsi from opening the many wine bottle each night. they just want to discourage you from bringing your own because they tend to think they have a very good range. when i heard this, my first reaction was go fuck yourself. then, because i couldn't be fagged buying some wine, we had a look at the hibiscus selection. it wasn't as bad or expensive as i thought. you can get a good bottle for $25 but they also have some at $40 and up. so unless you buy $7.99 in the label-free bin and want to pay more to cork it, give the wine list a go.

between the two of us we murdered a homemade gnocchi with cured bacon and spiced chicken surrounded by tabouleh with couscous. add to that some fresh bread rolls, a spinach salad and a nice shiraz and you have a wonderful meal for less than $70. i'm so impressed with this place. two waiters (one with a hair accident and dubious accent) managed to maintain great service and order in a restaurant where some places might employ six. and the six would still run around, bump into each other and totally fail to see you waving knives and napkins to get some fucking service (see liquid, bhoj and becco). you must go for dinner. but don't go monday or tuesday because they're not open. we're going to have to have words with the management about that. apparently they do brunch from 9am to 3pm. if it's anything like dinner, i'm all for it.

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