gills diner - gills alley melbourne 3000 9670 7214

just try and find gills alley. i dare you. it's not easy. and so not what you expect, either. alley is probably overselling the whole narrow laneway thing. and diner doesn't come close to describing what is achieved at gills diner. if you imagine an old car repair shop with bakery cafe in the front, tables and chairs in front of an immense kitchen in the back and top class food and service, that would be gills.

i almost always judge the first impressions of a restaurant by the quality of the bread they serve. Any restaurant in australia (i'm allowing for the fact that not all restaurants overseas may serve bread so you should all be fucking grateful) should have a store of fresh bread to serve to customers with their wine (or long island iced teas - see trunk review). dry, stale, uninteresting and especially mean servings of bread will earn demerit points. so in fact a restaurant can be minus 50 points even before we've had wine. something to keep in mind, eh?

i can remember an excellent steak, a wonderful shiraz, a shared dessert and the aforementioned bread. i even managed to score a free loaf of bread on the way out. 'you, eh, you gonna eat that?' woohoo! i strongly recommend that you stay the fuck away from gills so that i don't have to fight for a table. but it is open quite late and if you can find it, it will be well worth your while. let the games begin!!