Lilac Cafe Restaurant: Guildford

Hello currently non-existant readers and welcome to the first offical Food Warriors blog review!

This week we'll be taking a look at the small but stylish Lilac Cafe/Restaurant on Swan Street, Guildford. Located near a handful of other cafes, restaurants, interesting art and craft stores and historical sites it could be easily overlooked as from the outside it doesnt seem like much!
Inside however the decor is clean and simple with mirrors to enlarge the space and interesting features such as blackboards running the length of the mirrors to display the daily specials.

Like many cafes and restaurants however they fall into the trap of hanging random crap on the wall for no clear reason, in this case pointless coathooks and...chairs? Here we have a view of the back room, including wall chairs, which i imagine would be used for very small functions or larger tables. Still nice, but lacking the natural sunlight of the streetside dining area.

Now onto the food!

As a vegetarian there were limited options, however this is not uncommon at many restaurants, my co-reviewer went for the set menu, $35 for 5 courses including a choice of two mains and deserts, while i decided on the vegetarian Gnocchi at $26. First up was the warm crusty bread with olive oil.

The bread was tasty enough and smelt wonderful, but in the end....its just bread, not that hard to get right, next came the soup, Pumpkin, potato and bacon. With quite a strong pumpkin flavour, the soup was tasty, but dont be tempted to experiment too much with the interesting red salt....not good for soup!

After this came the parmasan aranchini balls with a lemon aeoli sauce, simply presented and very promptly served after the first two courses, it was a little bland, but nice and soft with a crispy outer layer.

Then came mains, steak with roast vegetables and red wine sauce and gnocchi with pumpkin, spinach, blue cheese and a creamy tomato sauce, but more importantly A GIANT STEAK KNIFE!

The steak had a very strong red wine sauce and the meat, while a nice flavour, was a little tough. The vegetables were lovely and soft and cooked well.

The gnocchi was beautiful and soft with a delicious creamy tomato sauce and well balanced with the vegetables and sauce.

Finally came desert, a small portion of white chocolate mousse which was well presented, creamy and tangy, without being too overpowering.

Overall a nice dining experience, service was fast though not overly friendly even though we were one of only two tables at the time. The only major fault was that perhaps for the prices being charged the portion sizes seemed a bit small, not really leaving you with a feeling of value for money, though we both left feeling well fed without being absolutely stuffed.

Service: 3 warriors out of 5

Food: 4 warriors out of 5

Ambience: 4 warriors out of 5

Overall: 3.5/4 warriors out of 5