Weekend in Phillip Island and Restaurant Review: Rustic Water Brewery

I used to love going to Phillip Island as a child - waiting impatiently to see the little penguins emerge from the sea and waddle across the beach to their sand dune burrows was particularly exciting. Things look so different coming back here now. The last thing I wanted to do was be a part of a dense crowd waiting to see penguins. I wanted this to be a relaxing two days. We arrived on Saturday evening and decided to go down to the pier and take in the sea breeze before dinner.

The next day, we lazed around a lot and visited a few places.

Phillip Island Chocolate Factory

Churchill Island

We ended up doing most of the cooking at our rented holiday accomodation.

Location: 1821 Phillip Island Rd, Cowes [Phillip Island]
Phone: 03 5952 1666
Link: rustywaterbrewery.com.au
Cuisine: European, Modern Australian
Overall Impression: 5/10

We passed by the Rusty Water Brewery on our way to our accomodation so we decided to pop in for lunch.

J enjoyed several beers as I volunteered to take over driving duties for the day. He was quite pleased with the beers on offer.

Rusty risotto $27.90 - our famous rusty risotto served with smoked chicken, mushrooms (oyster, swiss and portobello), prepared in our own homemade vegetable stock

Warm Thai beef salad $21.00 - tender sliced eye fillet beef, rice noodle, coriander, vietnamese mint and onion topped with nam jim dressing 

We found the food extremely pedestrian and bland in terms of flavour. The risotto was slightly soggy and the Thai beef salad lacked seasoning and flavour. The portions were also smaller than we expected. To the restaurant's credit, however, the service was of a good standard and the pub had a nice and relaxed ambience. Perhaps, this is a venue we would have enjoyed much more for a Saturday night drink rather than a Sunday lunch.