Ioesco - new Italian restaurant at Sanctuary Cove

There is a new restaurant in Sanctuary Cove to rival Marinara, my favourite restaurant of all time. The new restaurant on the block is called Ioesco.

According to that link, prices are around $40-$55, which from memory seems a bit high.

It is definitely a lot trendier than Marinara. Marinara is the home of red checkered table clothes, vines growing on the walls, someone singing while playing guitar, and the most awesome garlic pizza bread ever.

Ioesco has floor to ceiling windows, a trendy look, a list of tempting specials and a olive oil and sea salt bread.

The pizza choices aren't as wide as Marinara's, but there's some more interesting choices like lamb shanks, more range of gnocchi, and some old favourites like chicken parmagiana, and spaghetti carbonara (the traditional kind with cream optional).

Even the fussy eaters in my family attempted to eat their own weight in pasta. Actually I'm not sure that I've ever seen my little sister eat so much at the one time. I had risotto, but I want to go back to try the gnocchi.

The big question: is it better than Marinara? I'm not sure. I think I need to go back and eat at both a few more times. Lasagne from Marinara, yum!

A review of Amy's lunch

One of the girls at work had chips and gravy for lunch today (her theory - she was eating a healthy dinner, so needed to balance out her diet with some gravy).

I took the opportunity to borrow her lunch for a few minutes to do a quick review on the presentation of the foodcourt cavery chips and gravy (this was from the carvery in Post Office Square in Brisbane city).

As you can see in the photo, it came in a cupboard cup inside a paper bag. The gravy had gotten on the bag, which in my opinion is a minus (soggy bag and waste of gravy).



Here's another view with the bag pulled down - here we can see gravy spilled down the side of the cup, and dry chips down the bottom. Definitely a sub-standard serving of chips and gravy.

When at uni we could add the gravy ourselves and would end up with a pool of it at the bottom of the cup. Sure the chips down the bottom would be mush by the time we finished, but we'd never run of gravy. And that's the important thing.

Thank you to Amy for letting me take photos of her lunch and not giving me too many weird looks over it.