Let me tell you it surely does rule. Last night A few friends, Karen and myself visited the Adelaide entry in the Channel 7 reality TV show My Restaurant Rules. Being both food and wine buffs and suckers for reality television, this was an experience that we had been looking forward to for quite a while.

The Red Sea is located in Rundle Street, one of Adelaides more famous restaurant strips, and has proved to be a bit of a hit with the local populous. Well, it sure was a hit last night anyway, because we cued for 3, that's right, count 'em, 3 hours to get in. We decided to meet there just after 6, which in hindsight probably was a bit of a mistake. It would have been alright if we went actually at 6 and made the first sitting, but it was decided by all that a quick cleansing ale was required before dinner so we didn't actually get there until 6:30. But the hours in the line passed relatively quickly. We were mostly in the line with pretty nice people, and the hosts of the establishment, Nick and Emily came out and spoke to us on a couple of occasions.

There was a little bit of excitement in the cue however, mostly caused by a person behind us best described as a rotund, attractiveness challenged female canine. Aside from having her own gravity, this delightful young lady liked to smoke, and seemed to be smoking the stinkiest fricken cigarettes ever. Not that pleasant in a crowded line situation, so Karen, always the assertive one asked her nicely to step away from the line whilst she smoked. She petulantly complied, but returned to the cue later and Karen felt the planet woman blow on the back of her head in a bizarre display of smokers rights. We could have had a situation on our hands if one of her orbiting satellites hadn't intervened and said "Oh come on, I don't want go get in another fight! We've been in two already today!"

Finally however, we got inside and were seated, and I took a photo as proof.



So, after enduring a wait that you would never even dream of doing for any other eatery, what was it like?

In short, bloody fantastic. Food was superb, I had the signature duck dish, which was a glazed roast duck dish that literally fell off of the bone and melted in your mouth. Karen had a pork and scallop dish, and her assessment was equally positive. The sides were sensational, my particular favorite was mushrooms fried in butter with shallots. The fact we washed it down with a '93 D'Arenberg Ironstone Pressings Shiraz Grenache didn't hurt the experience either.

Service was mostly quick and efficient, although Leanne's meal was delivered some 3 minutes later than the rest of the table. A few points off there I'm afraid! The place did have a great atmosphere, the fun vibe almost made you forget that you were paying silver service prices to sit on benches. The plasma screens on the walls were a nice touch, and one of them was proudly espousing the "ambiance consultants" that had been engaged at the establishment. They did a pretty good job, because we all agreed the ambiance-o-meter was ticking of the scale.

You couldn't fault the enthusiasm of the hosts Nick and Emily, they go out of thier way to personally make sure every one feels welcome (including, I guess, even the F.U.B. mentioned above). The picture below depicts one golden moment when our very pregnant buddy Leanne was showing her growing fish to Emily.



Overall, damn good. So get your mobiles out now and message 5 to 1887517 to keep them in the game!