La Bohemia

I had read Matt Preston's review about La Bohemia and the Chilean food sounded very interesting. Since it is located in Noble Park and hence very close to where I live, my friend Paul and I just decided to go and eat dinner there. The restaurant surprised me in more ways than one, not all entirely good.

The first surprise was how a strategicall taken photo shown in the review can really distort how the real restaurant looks like. From the photo, I thought the restaurant a bit like Rumi, but it was actually more like a take away shop with tables. Not to be fazed, I kept telling Paul, the review was really good. So the two of us sat down inside the otherwise empty table and proceeded to order our meals to a backing track of Chilean music I suspect.

For entrees we got the Artichoke, Beand Tomato Salad. I never thought I would ever utter these words about artichoke, but it was "very good" indeed. The salad had a nice tangy dressing combined with the sour cream and the crunch of the artichokes worked extremely well. I ate most of it.


The meatballl were also very good. The caramelised onions in the tomato type sauce gave flavour to the already flavourful meatballs. The meatballs were way better than those at Rumi, the much highly fancied restaurant.


For mains, I got the Seafood Paella. The paella had a very strong and distinctive taste and with the sweet seafood, was a good combination.


Paul ordered this exotic sounding thing that ended up being Steak, Egg and Chips. It was a good steak though, but not sure where the Chilean influence was.


There wasn't exactly an atmosphere in the restaurant since there were no other customers. So if you want a quiet dinner with your friends, here's the place to go. Service was good, with plates and cutlery being changed between entrees and dinner even. But I guess since we were the only customers, there were no excuses for bad service.

Overall Rating: 11/20, Food was surprisingly good but slightly expensive. The atmosphere, or lack of was slightly unsettling at the start. But afterwards we found that we could talk without shouting was a good thing.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.