District Dining at Surry Hill, team bonding and fine dining

Lunch Special on the Friday. Rib-eye

•  Food 7/10
• Service 8.5/10
• Value 8/10
• Cleanliness 9/10

We visited District Dining at Surry Hills on the 2nd of December 2011 for lunch with a team of 8. This is a my review regarding the food, service and value. I want to emphasise that this is purely my own opinion and no commercial benefit attached to this review of in fact any of my personal blog. This is purely a hobby...
District Dining (http://www.districtdining.com.au) is located in Surry Hills in a very convenient location in central part of Sydney. You just need to cross the street from Central station to come to restaurant. It seems like a hard job to find parking near the restaurant. It wasn't an issue for us on Friday as we took a Cab.
Our manager picked this restaurant as our team bonding lunch. It was agreed by everyone in the team that it was a great pick. We realised that restaurant has been reviewed well by SHM food guide and we couldn't go wrong with the selection. 
The Wine - Massena (In my language it sounds like a popular word among boys "Machan")

Machan

Gregory ordered a Shiraz from Barossa Valley wine maker called Massena and the label called the howling dog. It was a beautiful smooth shiraz and the taste was amazing. Every sip I took it was getting smoother and smoother. I'm not a wine tasting expert but group consensus was it was a beautiful bottle of Shiraz from Australian own backyard. I believe Australia produces the best wines in the world and you can easily spend 30 bucks and buy a great wine. Massena came with the price tag of  $74. And with my further research on the wine during the weekend I was able to establish that we can buy the wine for the half of that price from many cellars. But I guess this is normal for a wine in a hat restaurant.
Here is the link to the wine maker's site http://massena.com.au
They also served a cheese platter with three types of cheeses and it was great combination with a wine.


Entree - Crispy pigs ears, Szechuan salt and Crispy quail eggs, tarragon mayonaise
After the waiter kindly explained the menu and instructed that best way to enjoy the food is to order several items from the menu and share it among the group. Since we had couple of vegetarians and it's a new team, we decided to go with individual orders.
For entree we had pig ears and quail eggs and pig ears definitely won my vote. It was the first time I ever tried pig ears and it wasn't a let down at all. It was stripped into several thin pieces and tasted like chicken wing.
Friday Special - Rib-eye steak


Menu was simple and easy to order and choice was difficult as I was tossing up between several menu items until the waiter came and explained the blackboard menu special. Just the word 
steam caught my attention and it was my choice. Medium rare steak was a great choice. I was surprised with the addition of sourdough. Meat of was nice but was well done in some parts, which was the biggest downside of the whole meal. Crispy onion rings was a great mix to the meal. But overall the steak was brilliant. I think the Massena wine made the taste extra special. 
Dessert - Chocolate mousse

This was the biggest let down for me for the whole lunch. Mousse was hard and too bitter. But mixing it with hazel nut ice cream and hazel nut crumble was a huge surprise. I was happy to have the hazel nut ice cream and crumble. It was a great combination. If the chocolate mousse was softer my final vote will be definitely gona be higher.


Overall the experience was great and would recommend anyone to visit the place.
Value for money was great as all the main meals were average sydney price. I can't say this would be a great place for a romantic out as the location doesn't present a romantic atmosphere.  this would be a perfect place for a group of friends celebrating a birth day.
Have you visited the District Dining before? If so, let me know what you think.....