The Garden restaurant is within the Wests Ashfield Leagues Club. The club has undergone huge renovations and it has resulted in a beautiful bistro type restaurant with hanging plants and themed garden décor. It is bright and open and you can see the chefs work away at their meals and also the woodfired pizza oven in action. With friendly service, we were looked after by waiter Dean, who has worked at the Club long before the new renovations. He explains to us that the Garden is a farm-fork concept, with head chef Oliver Heath, celebrating the use of well-sourced local ingredients direct from the farm. Ethically sourced and sustainable products with an aim to minimise waste. These aspects are a key to carrying out their vision. He even pointed out one of the county butchers who was in town and came to see how his product has been delivered on the plate.
The restaurant is large and Dean said they’d served over 360 people the previous night, so they’re certainly capable of large crowds. There’s also a large bar and small lounges where you can grab a drink, coffee or dessert if you so please. The ambience was also nice, they had a solo guitarist playing and singing modern slow tunes.
The menu has a range of options; whether it be a couple of small plates, sharing plates or a few pizzas, there’s something for everyone and it is certainly family friendly. A foodie friend of ours had eaten at the Garden before and gave us some suggestions. We went for the Blue corn bread; corn bread made with blue cheese and a jalepeno butter – moist bread and strong flavours which worked extremely well together.
The pork roll-ups were a recommendation of our waiter – small wraps with some ancho chilli braised pork. This filling was sweet and these wraps are some which I’d definitely eat again. The crispy lamb ribs were one of our favourite things on the menu, sticky and melt in your mouth meat – certainly some quality meat.
We also had some lovely prawns from the special menu. The prawns were butterflied, grilled and served with lemon.
We thought the entrees were outstanding but keen on trying a main or two. There were some great options available, they sell full buckets of prawns, a family roast, pasta, schnitzels and burgers but we went for the farmer’s plate. This is a plate of the speciality meat, which on this day was lamb, with sausages, seasonal vegetables and gravy. We also got a side of cauliflower and the garden salad with walnuts, vinaigrette and organic feta cheese. Good quality meat that was cooked well.
The restaurant became quite busy, we weren’t really asked about dessert and were quite full at that stage. The menu shows they offer gelato and cheesecake and other cakes. Maybe next time we visit.
Thank you to The Garden and Ashfield Leagues for their hospitality and to Papaya PR for arranging the visit. You can visit their website and even see the farmers listed where they source their ingredients from.