Mjolner, Redfern

“So there’s this place which is viking themed and you drink beer out of a horn.” Um hell yeah! That’s literally all it took to convince Noods, Kiren and Syl to visit Mjolner (mythical name of Thor’s hammer) in Redfern.

We descend down the stairs and make our way through the dark, cavernous rooms, past the wall of meat ageing in the locker.

We’re welcomed with a traditional Viking toast, a complimentary serving of house made mead. It’s smooth, fruity and sweet and so delicious I immediately order another shot of it.

The boys want to drink their beer in horns so a round of bottled beers are ordered before our waiter arrives to explain the technique of drinking out of the horn (sideways just fyi lol)

We start off with this must order- Roasted Bone Marrow ($20) with meat powder and watercress. We scoopsies the quivering, gelatinous globules and pile onto the warm bread. We unanimously agree that it was a good thing we didn’t have to share!

Then there’s the tender and delicious smoky Charred Octopus Tenticles ($20) with curls of kholrabi and a puddle of squid ink sauce.

The Whole Snapper ($35) is a beauty, the fish is plump and flakes easily away. The flavours are fresh and clean and I feel incredibly virtuous haha #cleaneating

The Short Rib ($45) with celtuce and juniper is bloody impressive and is my fave of the night. It’s super tender with a good amount of fat ribboned throughout so it just melts in your mouth.

The special of the night was the Pork Loin ($60) which was just so beautifully presented. I mean look at them fat slices of juicy pork, each crowned with glorious crackling! Definitely value for money!

On the vegetable front we go for the Cauliflower ($18) which was roasted and doused in the most incredible burnt butter sauce. Seriously, bathe me in that sauce please!

We also added some sides of Pan roasted green beans ($14) with hazelnut sherry and garlic.

And Roasted carrots ($12) with carraway and yoghurt dressing. I was a bit disappointed by the portions of the vegetables at those prices. They were all delicious but I guess I was expecting whole baby carrots so when this bowl came out I was like, did someone give us a half eaten bowl?

For dessert we shared the Mascarpone parfait ($15) with macadamia, charred lemon and plum sauce which was deliciously creamy and had the perfect balance of sweetness.

And the Cheese selection ($35) because, cheese. Unfortch by then it was getting late and we were being urged to finish up our meal so I never did get to find out what the cheeses were other than ‘hard, soft and a blue’. Side note: look! Babeh carrots!

While the food was incredible, the service can be a bit hit and miss which is a shame. On a round of beers we’d ordered, they didn’t bother telling us they were actually out, and instead just served us a different beer from their list (Nice varied boutique list tho btw). For the next round, wanting to try their other beers, and not being a big fan of our previous choice, we unknowingly ordered the same beer that was given to us. Wondering why it tasted the same, we queried this, but was told they had actually run out of our previous order, and refused to swap out the beer or cancel it from our bill even though we didn’t drink it, putting a damper on such a great night. Ah wells.