ochre restaurant

appalling duck was tough an.... appalling
duck was tough and tasteless
service was good

delicious, fresh, local, and extremely generous portions - a 3 course menu for one was enough to feed two! the waitress explained the menu very clearly to us.

omg! these guys do it well.. in cairns for business (as i am several times a year), i left my decision to go out for dinner til after 8 on a friday evening. despite an extremely busy night, carley answered the phone nice and quick and slotted me in to a inside table by the window. the initial greeting was spot on. as i had booked for one person, i was greeted by name on arrival. the atmosphere at ochre is spot on, relaxed without being cheap and classy without being over the top. my waiter was a rare breed. educated in the menu and wine list, without being a robot and regurgitating the whole menu, which you get a lot in other places. the menu is diverse and intriguing. it was a challenge to decide what to have. eventually i opted for the roast duck breast with watercrest, shitaki, black rice & mandarin. well.......its was superb. duck was cooked to perfection, "melt in your mouth" and all the flavors of the dish where sharp, and harmonious. the verdelho accompanied the dish perfectly. backing this up was the quandong crème brulee.......omg! i choose the crème brulee wherever i eat, as a bit of a comparison. hands down, this is the best crème brulee i have eaten within australia.
i a nutshell, if you are looking to have a top shelf meal at reasonable prices and courteous, professional service, ochre is the place for you.
give carley a call.
i will be back as soon as i can. thanks for a great dinning experience.

...this is my first negative post on urban spoon. i have stewed about this for 3 days and i'm clearly still annoyed about my experience to post this. it's such a shame because i was prepared to have a lovely night out with some close friends and this restaurant ruined the night for us. i was absolutely appalled with the service and food quality. this is on the higher end of restaurant pricing for urban spoon and the meal we chose had a minimum of two people which ended up being the worst seafood platter i have ever come across. the tempura batter on the calamari was cold and greasy like a lot of the other food included in this so called fresh seafood platter. it actually made myself and the other person i shared this dish with ill from the grease. this is not good enough from a restaurant that claims to have the freshest local produce. i'm not normally one to complain but this time i couldn't leave without giving some constructive criticism. i didn't want my money back, i just wanted to let someone know how upset i was with this meal and receive some sort of an apology or empathy. instead the manager was patronising, which made me even less
impressed (as you could imagine). i was so disappointed i made a list at the table of all the things that were unacceptable with the seafood platter.
due to the fact that the seafood platter was only available if 2 people ordered, the main meal only had 1 piece of atlantic salmon that we had to try and divide evenly. this was also the case with the green tea soba noddles rolled up on the one chop stick. this meant one of us had to take a bite before the other could then eat the left overs. i expected a lot more for the price. the green tea soba noodles with ginger and black sesame seeds were bland and uncreative for a seafood dish. i completely didn't appreciate the patronising question from the manager of whether i "had tried green tea soba noodles before?" after i explained this to her. i wasn't even sure what place they had on a seafood platter. the meal got served with a basic "pub" salad and chips as a side!
strangely we had the table set with a lobster fork with no use as we did not receive any fresh seafood to use this type of utensil with. we had to pour our own drinks for the night and after i made the complaint and asked for the bill, the manager took a further 15mins to come to our table. it saddens me that someone can serve this type of food to paying customers. especially after seeing how many awards the restaurant has been awarded. it was not good enough!

this is how australian restaurants should be. from the moment we arrived, the staff were attentive and pleasant without being intrusive, pretty unusual in popular aussie restaurants. the menu is full of interesting local food options with several dining choices, from tasting plates to degustation, 2 and 3 course set menus and a la carte. very handy when considering how you want your emu, crocodile, roo or seafood served. and the question - does estuarine crocodile count as seafood?

we sampled the wattle seed damper bread and local dukka with a bottle of fizzy (an o'leary walker hurtle) to start, whilst we lingered over the substantial menu. we had both tasting platters of australian antipasto (thai roo, crocodile wanton, ocean trout with green ant gravlax, emu and finger lime labnah) and seafood compilation (spiced calalmari, pippi's in coconut and myrtle tom yum, oysters natural, with bloody mary pearls, and tiger prawns). both dishes were wonderfully presented, explained by our enthusiastic and passionate server. for mains, we had the fish of the day - wide mouth nannygai with a red curry sauce and i had the crocodile and prawns in a native pepper seed batter with pickled veg and sambal. i do have to say the crocodile was a bit chewy - and i put this down to the nature of crocodiles, though everything was gorgeously presented. it was a surprise to meet staff who were really passionate and knowledgeable about ingredients (including where the chef shops) and the food they served.

the wine list was wide and reasonably priced. which pleased my hubby, so we had multiple bottles.

we finished with a quandong creme brûlée, mainly because i had no idea what a quandong was! very nice, but quandongs are hard to some by apparently, so won't be using many at home.

all in all, this was an excellent meal, the location is a rather a nondescript corner in the cbd but the outdoor seating is not affected by this as cairns traffic seems fairly light.

this is what i expect from a highly rated restaurant in australia and, i was pleased to see other patrons enjoying the level of service and surprise at the fare that i felt. we'll be back as soon as we can.

disappointment. decided to bring some overseas visitors to try out some australian food. what a huge disappointment!

knowing that we are only small eaters, we decided to go with 1 starter australian antipasto to share and 3 mains to share. our waitress with the short blonde hair was pretty rude. she was initially friendly but when she tried to persuade us to change the antipasto to a main instead of a starter, but we decline, her whole attitude changed! knowing that we were only small eaters, we decided against it.

service was really poor.
after more than an hour of waiting, we decided to enquire if the food was even being cooked! looking around us, there were 80% of the people still waiting for their food. we decided to approach a waiter to enquire if the meals are ready as we had an early start the next morning and it was getting really late. the blonde waitress replies - '1 hour wait is not too long at all'!

what kind of attitude is that towards fully paying customers??

after the long awaited meals, only 1out of the 3 meals tasted any good.
the beef was tender and the potato stacks were reasonably nice.
the chicken dish was horribly dry and the wallaby was very tough.

waiting for the bill was another big nightmare .. took ages too.

what a great big disappointment to a lovely start to a holiday!
will never ever recommend you to anyone.

expensive, judgemental and rude staff.

good but not great. i dined at ochre this week after several good reviews of this restaurant. the service was pleasant, although i did have to ask the waiter several times to bring more drinks. we chose the seafood tasting plate and the entree impressed. it was sizeable too. unfortunately the main course was disappointing and heavily featured crumbed seafood. the quality of the seafood could not be faulted, but i think the cooking methods were uninteresting. i don,t feel the prices were too bad, but would not order the same dish if i went back

great food, poor service. the food here is delicious, no doubt about it. after eating here last night with a bunch of friends, we all tried something different, and all of us loved the dishes we had. the fried bugs were perfectly cooked, the pork with macadamia nut crust melted in my mouth, the pork belly and scallops came with a fantastic sauce, and the wallaby was beautifully tender.

unfortunately, service was slow and the table staff seemed a bit rude at times, even though there were not that many people at the restaurant that night to justify them taking so long. however, the quality of the food was enough that it overcame the flaws in the service, and i would be willing to go back for more.

don't waste your time! it took over an hour and 40 minutes to get our food and we were only a group of 5. our meals were small! the pork belly main looked like an entree size and we had too pour our own wines as there appeared to be not enough staff. we are locals and will not be coming back.

a staple of mine - the ochre has a fantastic modern australian menu using fresh and amazing local ingredients. not only is the food superb, the vibe of the restaurant exudes fine dining and the wine menu is one of the best in the city.

the spiced fries, delicious! i had the chicken prosuitto with pumpkin mash. so yummy, good service and beautiful resturant, can't wait to go back and try some really native australia food :)

i really enjoyed the food, especially the bugs (entree) but the service started out being really bad due to a language problem. the manager sorted it after the initial problems.

have been told this restaurant is a must for any food lover..... it lives up to reputation and more! emma was a waitress that was warm, polite and quite knowledgeable.... nothing was too much trouble....
the food spoke of vibrancy with australian native notes married perfectly together.
a must try!

we had the australian platter for two, which included a wattleseed damper, entree of prawns, crocodile & antipasto platter of emu, wontons etc. main was kangaroo and wallaby with sweet potato fries and buckchoy. dessert was wattleseed & hazelnut pavolva. the food was amazing, service great, but by the end we were too full!

had the gnocchi as entree and kangaroo as main, was very tasted and had the most perfect balances of flavours! i can imagine anything on the menu would be also as good. cocktails also very yummy!