I love being surprised. It's a pretty awesome feeling when you take a punt on a restaurant and it pays off handsomely. Very early on in my blogging adventure, I started to look outside my normal comfort zone for dining spots, which led me to check out Iceworks in Paddington. It wasn't just any old night either, we'd decided to take a punt on Iceworks on New Years Eve (see post here). It was a bit of a departure from our usual NYE dinner celebrations, which are normally at more established restaurants. Like I said, taking a punt can have a big payoff and in this case, it was a meal that was quite unexpected and one to remember.
As is often the case, things change and we were invited along to check out the changes at Iceworks, which included a new team looking after the restaurant, a new chef and a brand new menu. Nowadays, it pretty common for restaurants to invite along bloggers and regular diners to check out new menus and provide feedback. Its a great way to engage and reward regular diners and an excellent way to promote the business, but getting bloggers in can be a double edged sword! There is a bit of pressure on to get it right and if it goes wrong, there is a potential for it to be very public!
We are quite familiar with Iceworks, we've not only dined there before, but we used to live just up the road and had walked past the location many times before. For residents and those with great memories, you might even remember when the location actually housed real Ice Works, I'm pretty sure it was called the Ithica Iceworks and did a great job of supplying ice to Brisbane residents. We'd arranged to arrive around 6:30pm, so didn't really have time to walk, which with the warmer wether would have been lovely - but not to be. Forgetting that there was plenty of parking underneath the restaurant, we parked around the corner and ended up walking a bit anyway!
