Red Ochre Grill
By Bee

Occasionally in my life I’ve had a “friend” that I don’t see very often, that I will meet on the street, have a pleasant conversation with and think “Why don’t I see her more often?” Then we will get together, and I will remember why, usually vowing to avoid future interactions, at least until my memory fades again.

The Red Ochre is like that friend. Well located on Alice’s open air walking mall, it sports a pleasant outdoor patio, and the displayed menus tout a nice variety of dishes, using both common and local bush-tucker ingredients. Wattle-seed mashed potatoes and a garden salad with salt-bush are stand-bys.

Periodically we pass the Red Ochre and say, “Oh, we haven’t been here for awhile. Why is that?”

If I reached back into the recesses of my brain I might recall that six months ago at this restaurant our friend Roylynn ordered a “Caesar salad with NO anchovies.” After a long wait, she received fried calamari. In response to her returning the dish and repeating her order, the Caesar salad arrived WITH anchovies. Hungry, she gave up and picked them out herself. At the same meal I asked how mushroom soup was, and was told that it was “not crunchy.”

If I peered into a less remote corner of my mind, I would remember that three months ago, Paul and I came to the Red Ochre for lunch on a slow Sunday. “Oh are you here to eat?” asked a waitperson as she passed us passing from restaurant to patio, “I guess you can sit down.”

We sat and killed some time wondering what other activities besides eating she might have thought we were there for. The four or five wait staff were impressive in their concentration as they went about their chores, cleaning the cash register, arranging the bar and such. They seemed not at all distracted by our presence. After ten minutes of trying to catch someone’s eye. I rose and collected a couple of menus from the unmanned host’s station. Another twenty passed with no one approaching our table.

“Should we physically go get someone?” Asked Paul.

“No, I don’t think I have the heart to be as assertive as I would want to be.”

“Yeah, me neither. Wanna go to the Sports Bar?”

I don’t think we have any excuse for the fact that when Paul suggested the Red Ochre recently, both myself, and Roylynn and her family once again agreed to dine there…I think it’s something you have to live in the Alice for a while to understand.

I was pleasantly surprised as we entered to be greeted by the hostess before we had even crossed the patio. The pleasantness continued through seating, ordering, and arrival of drinks.

Roylynn’s husband Mac asked about the special, (T-bone steak on potato mash with included beer or wine for $25) and the waitress admitted that she herself was vegetarian, but that the customer response had been very positive thus far. I was heartened by her comment because (A) as Paul points out, I am a vegetarian sympathizer, (B) it added a personal touch the dining experience and (C) it showed she was aware of the existence of previous customers, which I thought boded extremely well for us.

The good news is that the service has vastly improved. The wait-staff were friendly. They reliably conveyed our orders to the kitchen and transported the correct food to our table.

The bad news is that the quality of food--which it might be argued was the reason we had in the past occasionally overlooked the quality of the service—has diminished. The food, while not terrible, was far from exceptional. According to reports, the battered fish was a bit oily and soggy, and the fish itself had not much taste. The steak was only so-so.

Two of us ordered the soup of the day—asparagus, leek and potato—and agreed that it was superior to our mains, but was still bland. I think I liked it best because I considered it to be a potato soup with asparagus and leek, so it seemed more flavourful than if one had expected an leek or asparagus soup with potato. The salads, vegetables, and chips that came with meals were all quite acceptable.

Paul ordered the Jamaican Rum Spice Chicken with salad. According to Paul, “It tastes like three separate items: Salad, boiled chicken, and Jamaican spiced-batter chicken skin. Somehow these three tastes don’t go together at all—though it helps if you think of it as boiled chicken and salad, with the salad having a kind of large spicy chicken skin crouton.”

We departed, not angry or horrified, but vaguely dissatisfied. As we walked down the mall Roylynn said, “Let’s not go there again.”

At least not for a while.

Red Ochre Grill
Todd Mall, Alice Springs NT
08 8952 9614