Birthday Dinner @ Bistro Gitan, Toorak Rd W, South Yarra

After dining at Bistro Gitan, I realised that we as Melburnians are so spoiled for choices. This is another example of a really good restaurant, where both the food and service are top notch. On a Saturday night, the place was just buzzing, with a very romantic and intimate table setting. Probably the only thing to fault there was that it was quite cramped, I laughed at something my friend said, threw my head back, and my head hit the person walking by to their table. Aside from that, every indecent and scandalous thing we've talked about did not reach the next table, which I was quite thankful for.

Food-wise, I would not say it was exactly French but every dish has a French element to it, like the sauce or the way it was cooked. Taste-wise, I really could not say anything was not in place. Everything was delicious and I would definitely come back here again.

For the small plate, we shared the small spanner crab lasagne ($13) - which had 2 sheets of lasagne with spinach and spanner crab. This was very simple but was packed with seafood and crab flavour. I wished they can make a huge plate of this and serve it as a main.

For entree, we had the steak tartare ($18) - I thought this was very sour and had a lot of pickle flavour. It's more of like pickled steak tartare but it was fresh. Reminded me of really good and fresh sashimi. Another entree we shared was the boudin blanc - chicken sausage with foie gras ($21). Another special of the night, it was a bit too salty for me but the sausage was cooked very well. I liked the texture was well but not everyone will like this.

For my main, I ordered the special, the flank steak bavette with onion rings and cafe de paris butter($35). This was delicious. I wished there was more of that butter. One of the best onion rings that I've had.

For dessert, I had the apple beignets with banana cream and caramel sauce ($16). Ok, this is not in their usual menu and was again a special but you have to order this. The donuts were very crispy and sugary (I would prefer they use powdered sugar rather than white sugar) but the inside was light, creamy, doughy with a few very thin slices of apple. Yum!