Outback Steakhouse

You must be wondering why I'm blogging about such an established steakhouse so far along my blog development. Well, that's because I've never tried it til now. Surprising right? Considering I've been on a hunt for great steaks, and having left my footprints at even some less known steak places, I've never tried Outback?? And who's fault is it? Lynn. She told me some when in the beginning of our steak love (back when we still thought that Hogs Breath had the yummiest steak on earth) that Outback isn't nice when she tried it. Since we have similar tastes (for most part), I struck it off my to-go list.

Then recently, we had some errands to run at City Hall area, and thought we could give MEDZS a try for their foie gras. The queue at MEDZS turned out to be way longer than we cared to wait for, and Outback did smell very good when we walked pass. And that silly girl suddenly decided she want to eat their bread. We asked, and were told it would be a 15 minutes wait for our table. That sounded okay, and so we left our number, and went to sit at a bench outside until we get the call to go back for our table.

When you put two very hungry girls in front of a menu each, you usually end up with way too much food. We hopelessly ordered a combination appetizer platter of Kookaburra Wings, Aussie Cheese Fries and Crispy Calamari served with their respective dips of blue cheese (no prizes for guessing why we ended up with this order), spicy ranch and zesty marinara dressings. And we added a Outback Nachos because it sounded soooo tempting with the cheese and beef and all that. For main, we ordered a Chargrilled Ribeye with its so-called expresso seasoning which I was quite apprehensive about. I think there was an ongoing promotion for smoothies and I got a watermelon, and she a mango.

The legendary bread she was dying for arrived quite quickly. Warm whole bread served with butter - what's there to not love? The fact that it was unsliced helped to keep the warmth in. It's not as impressive as she made it out to be, and we actually didn't order a second helping this time round. But then, that was partly because we were a little worried that we wouldn't be able to finish our food so we decided to behave ourselves (good thing we did...). The soup of the day was okay I guess, I've forgotten what it was though. But great to have because due to our hunger, we were happy with any food at all that arrives fast enough in front of us.

Warm bread with butter

Soup of the day

Our drinks

The nachos came next - a cheesy and sour creamy mountain of corn chips with hidden treasures of sauteed beef, tomato bits, jalepenos and olives. I'm not an olive fan so Lynn had to take care of those. Other than that, the nachos really hit the spot, and I love the tanginess from the tomatoes balancing everything out. Then arrived our platter. It was quite a surprise because we didn't expect the size of it. The wings were so-so, the fries a little soggy after being drenched in cheese. the calamari a little bland. But we did love the blue cheese dip, especially the occasional pieces of crumbled blue cheese that you scoop up. Woot! And I learnt that celery with dips is actually very yummy, and it helped to undo a little of the greasy damage the fried appetizers did to our palate.

Outback Nachos

Combination Appetizers

Finally came our ribeye. It wasn't as charred as we had expected, but the meat was succulent and juicy, with a great chew to it. I didn't taste any coffee, thankfully. The baked potato was hot, and the butter was melting quickly, and it made us two excited girls. I think I remembered some aromatic fats in the steak that gave me the 'mmmm' moment. I couldn't figure out what made her write off Outback so long ago. She couldn't either. She could only conclude that she probably didn't eat their steak when she first visited.

Chargrilled Ribeye

We were, however, unable to finish quite a fair portion of the food. We finished our meat (of course!), gave up of the potato (which turned out to be a little dry), struggled through the veggies, gave up on the cheese fries (too greasy and soggy), gave up on the last bit of nachos, and didn't order dessert (unbelievable!!). At the end of our meal, I noticed the two ladies at the next table ordered the nachos and the platter to share too. But that was it, they didn't order any mains. So us two greedy girls really OD-ed on our ordering that day.