Steves was renovated and beautified when I was at UWA and retained its reputation as a watering hole for students (on the weekdays) and Cougars on Friday night. This makes is especially important information because we don’t want people thinking we are on the prowl!

L to R: Prithi, whom you now know. Fidella, Blanche and yours truly.

Service was very good and friendly.

Since we were all dieting, I went with the chicken and chickpea salad. It turned out to be very different from what I expected. For one, there were no chickpeas in it. Then again, it tasted very healthy so it wasn’t too bad. I did think there was too much eggplant and too little flavour for my liking. I give this dish 4/10. It did not satisfy me.

Prithi ordered 3 side dishes. 1. Chips because she believes everyone will have them.. 2. the asparagus that was grilled. It was nice but difficult to get wrong. (or is it?)

3. She also ordered the long beans with toasted almonds. This was cooked to rightness. Correct me if I am wrong but is this Italian? I see it quite often on Italian menus.

The tastiest dish out of all was ordered by Fidella. She ordered the pan fried Gnocchi with mushrooms. Gnocchi differs from place to place. Sometimes they are soft like mashed potato and sometimes they are firmer and ‘bouncier’. Here, they are firmer. The pillows went well with the different mushrooms (chanterelle and oyster?) which crunched well and released beautiful thick mushroom goodness cooked in lots of butter(!!).

Dessert! Perhaps I was full and could not appreciate the dessert. However, I didn’t see Blanche and Prithi going crazy about them either!

I have eaten at Steves before and find some of the tapas dishes such as the lamb meatballs and gorgonzola toasties quite nice. The pastas are normally good as well as the fish and chips.. However, I would not recommend much else. I have tried their pizza and it was not good at all.

6/10 (I would not complain but I won’t be returning for food but only for drinks!)