Member Review by melbourne_muncher

The word Kaleido comes from the Greek roots for beautiful (kalos) form (eidos) and that certainly seems to be the emphasis at this self-proclaimed ?visually enchanting? restaurant. A recent birthday lunch for three at Kaleido was generally disappointing despite the chic surrounds with far too much emphasis on razzle dazzle and little emphasis on delivering quality, tasty meals. The selections on offer for lunch where uninspiring and all of our party settled on ordering dishes that we didn?t really feel like. The lunch offerings listed on the restaurant?s website were not on offer the day we visited and such things as a Ploughman?s lunch or fresh fettucine with saut?ed wild mushrooms, cinnamon mascarpone and parmesan would have been more appealing lunch offerings than those available to us when we visited. There was only one pasta dish on offer (spaghettini with mint, peas and lemon-$11.50) and a distinct lack of lunch type fare.
My dining companions opted for an adequate asparagus risotto that was slightly overcooked and a main sized chargrilled calamari salad with bottarga, baby beet leaves, cucumber and pomegranate seeds ($19) which had a pleasing, zingy flavour but the calamari were served very ?white? and lacked the expected chargrilled flavour. My dish was an organic roast chicken breast served with a fennel fritter ($24) that was a quite tasty and satisfying meal.
The desert was the real disappointment of the day as we all opted for the pear bombe alaska ($12) when, in retrospect, we might have been better off choosing a Valrhona chocolate share plate ($18). The bombe alaska was served in a good meringue casing with a thin layer of sponge wrapped around a still frozen centre of pear. The desert was served to us so frozen that we could not even break into it and had to leave behind the centre of the desert. All in all, Kaleido is certainly a restaurant of ?beautiful form? but not of beautiful food.