Prospects Training Restaurant

This training restaurant in Ballarat is always worthy of visiting because you usually don't know what taste treasures you may enjoy. This week they launched their new banquet dinner menu that is strongly represented in seafood and vegetarian dishes, many of them vegan.The 3 course banquet offers 3 entree dishes including oyster shot, salmon and a beetroot salad. The mains have 5 dishes with a beautiful ox tail and rice dish and the coconut coriander prawns my favorites. This was followed by 3 desserts on a tasting plate. All in all exceptional value for $35pp.

Beautiful food, well served, tasty, healthy, great value, something different. Unnecessary, negative and repetitive speech at start of the lunch by a staff member that nearly put me off my stunning lunch. Well done to the students!!

The food was five star standard, professionally prepared and presented. The deserts were very imaginative and topped off a wonderful meal in a very memorable way. The flavors in our many course banquet were delightful and obviously thoughtfully prepared. I would definitely recommend Prospects for quality and quantity of the food. The service was unfortunately poor. Our Waiter while very friendly was obviously not motivated to clear our tables or refresh our drinks. I was happy to ignore this until I was informed that our waiter is not a trainee himself, but a well paid professional. Overall however, we did enjoy our evening very much because the standard of the food trumped the service hands down.

Prospects has periodic "theme"dinners based on foods from a particular country or cuisine.A few nights back we booked in for their "Spanish Night". Again really good. Choice of three entees - we opted for the trout and rabbit escabeche and the gazpacho with generous medallions of lobster. Both very generous serves and well prepared and presented.From the four mains we went for the shoulder of baby lamb (perhaps a little overcooked) and the mixed seafood paella (a little watery but well cooked and with ample seafood) There were three desserts - we chose the Goxua (Spanish layered custard -a la a brulee), and the churros.A $24 bottle of Pyrenees region white, went well with the meal - $35 for the three courses. Our meals came promptly but some other diners seemed to have a wait.This is seriously good value in a stylish setting with staff that are pleasant if not quite ready for the maitre'd job at a five star restaurant. The trainee chefs, under the watch of experienced teaching staff, do a good job.

We visited this restaurant with much knowledge about the establishment and to be honest were not really expecting much. We were very pleasantly surprised and came away at the end of the meal already planning our next visit.The restaurant itself is very pleasant and well set out. The sole waitress on duty was very attentive and professional in her approach.The food was the real stand out however and extremely reasonably priced at $35 for three courses. The theme at the time we visited was French and I started with scallops and boned chicken wings. Very tasty although the sauce was a little under seasoned. My husband had pea soup with a homemade brioche roll which was really delicious.My main course was pork belly and I don't think I have had a better cooked version of this cut of meat. The fatty meat was really well rendered and the skin very crispy. My husband's risotto was also tasty but a bit overdone. Desserts were the highlight of the night and my soufflé was perfectly cooked and delicious. My husband also enjoyed his vanilla bavarois.As I have said our waitress was lovely, very attentive and kept us informed with any delays.While it was not all smooth sailing and it was evident that this was a training establishment we were very impressed by the standard or the food and service and great value and will be returning in the near future.