La Tortilleria in Kensington: the BEST tortillas in Melbourne

La Tortilleria
72 Stubbs Street, Kensington (map)
9376 5577
Open Thursday and Friday, 12-2:30pm and 6pm-late
Saturday and Sunday, 11:30am-3:30pm and 6pm-late
Closed Monday-Wednesday
website


My friend Ben tipped me off last week about the existence of La Tortilleria, a tortilla bakery and Mexican street eatery in a light-industrial pocket of Kensington near the freeway. I'm smitten.


La Tortilleria purports to be the only tortilleria in Melbourne making tortillas according to the traditional Aztec 'nixtamal' method, by stone-grinding fresh wholegrain corn rather than making a dough from processed corn flour and water. I met Diana (one of the proprietors, along with Mexican Gerardo) and she talked me through the nixtamalisation process. She explained that the traditional method they use of soaking the fresh corn grain in calcium hydroxide overnight results in significant nutritional benefits, as it releases the niacin (vitamin B3) enabling it to be readily absorbed by the body, improves the bio-availability of amino acids, increases calcium levels and reduces mycotoxin levels - all of which adds up to making them easier to digest and better for you. The Aztecs figured out the enhanced nutritional benefits yielded by nixtamalisation centuries ago because they used to grind the corn on limestone.

The various modern gadgetry used to make the tortillas is proudly on display, including the tank in which the corn grain is cooked and soaked, the stone-grinding mill that makes the nixtamal masa (dough), and the tortilla machine itself. The tortillas are baked fresh each day.


But it's not just about the health benefits: the nixtamal tortillas also have a noticibly enhanced aroma and flavour compared to their processed-corn-flour-and-water counterparts. As La Tortelleria's website states, the difference in the two methods is like making mashed potatoes from fresh potatoes rather than from instant mash powder! Their tortillas are free of preservatives, additives, gluten, cholesterol, and fats (both saturated and trans). They come sold in stacks, either fresh or vacuum-sealed, by the half kilo ($8, approx 22 tortillas) or kilo ($15, approx 45 tortillas).

If you'd like to dine in, you can order tacos ($4.50 each) al pastor with pork and pineapple, with carne asada (grilled beef) or with mushrooms and white cheese. They are FRESH and freaking delicious.


The short menu also includes a few quesadilla options ($4.50 each), guacamole with totopos tortilla chips ($6), and sopes de pollo ($6.50, also available in a vegetarian version). The freshly made totopos were the tastiest tortilla chips I've ever tried, and the sope with beans, lettuce, chicken and crema on a thick tortilla base was equally good.

Speaking of which, when is a Melbourne restaurateur riding the ubiquitous Mexican wave going to open a dedicated sopes house? It needs to happen.


There are various Mexigoods for sale in the tiendita operating in partnership with online Mexican groceries retailer guaca Mall-e, a self-serve salsa station (providing pico de gallo and spicier salsas that are homemade using fresh ingredients), and enough stores of corn grain to last the winter.


And just in case you needed MORE reasons to love La Tortilleria:
- the meat and eggs they use are strictly free range;
- many of their menu items can easily be made vegan;
- for $40 you can order a huge platter for two, which includes most of the items on the menu;
- they serve Mexican spiced coffee and hot chocolate, and flan for dessert;
- they're BYO; and
- provided things go well, Diana hopes to add chilaquiles and huaraches to the menu in the future (!!).

Bear in mind that they're closed Monday to Wednesday. There aren't many tables and as word catches on I'm guessing it will become harder to snare one of them, so consider phoning ahead to book.

Top Five Events from the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2013

The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Urban Coffee Farm
This year was a particularly enjoyable Melbourne Food and Wine Festival for me - as you'll see below, one of the events was of special emotional resonance for me and my family - and I wanted to share my top five MFWF events here on the blog, listed in chronological order (for those keeping score, I was a Festival guest at the World's Longest Lunch and a Treasury Wine Estates guest at the Seppelt lunch, but I paid for the other events).

1. World's Longest Lunch

The Festival kicked off with the World's Longest Lunch, taking place on a glorious Friday afternoon in Fitzroy Gardens. I'd never been to the event before and was surprised at how smoothly it ran and how good the food was, given that 1,230 people were being served a three course lunch in a park simultaneously (kudos to Peter Rowland for an epic job well done).

The menu this year was designed by two of the grandest dames in Australian food, Maggie Beer AM and Stephanie Alexander OAM. I was sitting three seats down from them and was appropriately starstruck. Maggie B rocking some killer shades!



2. Meatopia

The Middle Park Hotel was home one afternoon to Meatopia, a festival of rare breed meat and beer. I went with my Warialda Belted Galloway-smitten partner and a friend of ours, and in addition to Warialda beef and other meat treats we ate some terrific spit roasted Gropig Wessex Saddleback suckling pig in a bun with morcilla and apricot aioli. There was also a BBQ throwdown between Melbourne Pub Group's Paul Wilson and Dandelion's Geoff Lindsay, with Lindsay narrowly winning the vote and taking home the trophy and the glory.



3. The Everleigh Cocktail Tram

Despite never having dined on it, I've had a longtime fascination with Melbourne's Colonial Tramcar Restaurant. So when I saw in the MFWF program that Fitzroy's superlative cocktail bar The Everleigh would be running three nights in the restaurant tram using their new cocktail trolleys, booking tickets was a no-brainer.

Despite the heatwave the air conditioning in the tram was working just fine, and we settled down into the plush velvet seats and peered out between the fringed curtains. I may have clapped my hands with glee as the tram shuddered into motion, tracing the 112 route down through South Melbourne, Albert Park, Middle Park and along St Kilda's Esplanade and back again. Everleigh owner/manager Michael Madrusan and his dapper team did a great job mixing up Daiquiris, Negronis and Martinis (the Martinis were made using the silky new 666 Autumn Butter Vodka from 666 Pure Tasmanian Vodka) to a crackly jazz soundtrack. As my companion J quipped, all we needed to complete the Hercule Poirot ambiance was a MURDER. Perhaps fortunately, the worst that happened was a slight headache the next morning.

An unforgettable experience.




4. Salchicha De Bonegilla

Another event in the MFWF program which caught my eye was the sausage making workshop at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience, up near Albury/Wodonga. I quickly consulted my parents and my aunt Paola (of Italy on my Mind fame) and booked four tickets for us.


Our reason for being so keen to attend a workshop three hours' drive from Melbourne was the fact that it was being held at Bonegilla, the migrant centre that received and trained migrants to Australia during the post-WWII immigration boom. Between 1947 and 1971, over 300,000 migrants from more than 50 countries called Bonegilla their first Aussie home - including my own Italian grandparents upon their arrival in Australia in 1950. The only section of the camp remaining is Block 19 which now is now a museum, included on the National Heritage List. The workshop would be the perfect excuse for us to make a pilgrimage to a location that had such special significance for our family, particularly as we'd just marked the first anniversary of my Nonno's passing.

Visiting Block 19 was terribly moving. I can strongly recommend visiting, even if you're not one of the estimated 1.5 million Australians descended from migrants who spent time at Bonegilla.


Paola has written a wonderfully detailed blog post filled with photos and anecdotes about Nonna and Nonno's boat voyage from Italy. They arrived at Station Pier in Melbourne on 12 May 1950, and a train whisked them up to Bonegilla the following morning. My Nonna was put in an accommodation hut like the one pictured above (prior to taking in migrants, Bonegilla had been an army barracks), sharing the room with 19 other women. Because the camp was overcrowded at the time, my Nonno had to sleep in a tent with three other men. My Nonna cried every day she was at Bonegilla, desperately missing Italy and her brothers and sisters.

Nonna's voice is always tinged with dismay (okay, disgust) when she recounts how tasteless she found Australian food in 1950. Everything was cooked with lard/dripping, and if you wanted olive oil you could only buy it at the pharmacy.


It was fascinating to read the original recipes from the camp's Mess Hall. In addition to the mutton stew with lard and "meat salad" recipes below, we winced at descriptions of 'breakfast - mince on toast (yield 50 serves)', 'pineapple butter sauce (for tournedos) - add 1/2 cup canned pineapple juice...', and 'add the gourmet touch - mandarine marinade with 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup orange marmalade, 1/2 cup clove or finely chopped garlic, 1/2 levels tspn. powdered ginger'. How times have changed!


The sausage making workshop was held in Camp 19's mess hall by Lutz Peters, a butcher from Albury/Wodonga who was born in Germany in 1949. He emigrated with his family in 1952 and spent his third birthday in Bonegilla Migrant Centre, and eventually followed in his father's footsteps and became a continental butcher.

As you can see from the photos below, we had great fun at the workshop.




5. Feast Beneath the Seppelt Vines

The final MFWF event I attended was held at Seppelt winery. A group include b-f-K and I were ferried in a coach from Melbourne to Great Western in the Grampians wine region, where we were taken on an extensive tour of the winery by Seppelt's viticulturalists and vignerons: we picked Shiraz grapes in the vineyard, crushed Riesling grapes in a basket press and tasted Chalambar Shiraz.



The original vineyard was established in 1865, and what makes Seppelt unique is the underground labyrinth known as the Drives. More than three kilometres of tunnels dug by hand in the soft granite underneath the vines by local miners over 60 years. The Drives have been used for nearly 150 years for sparkling wine maturation, and are capable of storing over 1.5 million bottles.

Our tour culminated in an exploration of the Drives and a banquet lunch for 70 people in one of the tunnels, deep underground. An incredibly atmospheric dining venue! Despite the challenging catering conditions the food was very good quality (congratulations to the caterers Rue Cler Market on doing a terrific job - loved the local yabby and the pressed duck salad), the mood was jovial and we were treated to some excellent Seppelt wines, including some pre-release 2012 Drumborg Pinot Noir and Riesling, a comparison of the 2008 and 1999 vintages of St Peters Shiraz, and the 2004 Show Sparkling Shiraz.




All in all, a satisfying and fitting end to a very busy fortnight. What were your highlights/lowlights?

Cumulus Up opens above Cumulus Inc; is excellent

Greetings!

I've been away from the blog, busy working on something new that I'm excited about sharing here once it's ready. In the meantime, guess what finally opened last week?

Cumulus Up
Upstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (map)
9650 1445
Open Tuesday-Thursday 4pm–midnight, Friday-Saturday 4pm–1am, closed Sunday-Monday
website


There has been talk for several years about what Andrew McConnell & Co would do with the space upstairs from Cumulus Inc (at one stage it was just going be a function room, if memory serves). Luckily for us they decided to turn it into a wine bar, with a beautiful, distinctively Pascale Gomes-McNabb fitout that references downstairs and takes advantage of the abundant natural light.

It's called Cumulus Up. If it were up to me, I'd've named it Altocumulus - but then I'm nerdy that way.

There are a dozen interesting wines by the glass and plenty more by the bottle, mainly Australian and European though when I visited last Friday we had a punchy South African white. The food menu is pared back and snacky, with most dishes sub-$20. A notable exception is the honking big (800g!) dry aged rib eye to share for $90.


Melbourne, meet your new favourite snack. The confit duck-filled waffle with dabs of foie gras and prune, $7, bears all the hallmarks of a cult classic in the making (disclosure: unlike the rest of our dishes, the waffle was comped). Lobster roll who?


My favourite dish we ordered was the hand cut raw onglet with horseradish, capers, onion and sorrel ($16), though the panzanella with octopus, mussels and fermented chilli ($16) was also superb.


The service is as professional as we've come to expect from an Andrew McConnell restaurant, and the atmosphere is relaxed. While the wine bar may be intended to serve as a spillover for those waiting to dine downstairs, I foresee plenty of nights where I'll be making a beeline for Cumulus Up and settling in for the duration.

Fortnightly round-up (21 December)

As we all wind down for the year, I thought I'd share some recent food and drink highlights.

My #1 drink for the summer is Summer Cup by Sipsmith. Over the last year I've been an avid fan of the clean, elegant London Dry Gin put out by Sipsmith, the micro-distillery that was granted its distilling licence in 2009 (the first distillery granted a licence in London since Beefeater got theirs in 1853, and one of only four distilleries currently opering within London's city limits). The new product, the Summer Cup, is Sipsmith's answer to Pimm's: a concoction of gin, orange curaçao, sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters, maraschino cherry liqueur, lemon verbena distillate, Earl Grey tea, cardamom and cucumber. It is *delicious*. Mix it with fresh fruit and three parts good quality lemonade or ginger ale, or add it to Champagne to make a Summer Royale, or sub it in for vermouth in a Negroni, or just sip it over ice.

Note: I was invited to an industry tasting, and this bottle was a freebie, but I've already bought myself an additional bottle cos it's so damn good. Sipsmith spirits are imported by Hippocampus in Australia and if you want to get your mitts on a retail bottle in Melbourne, visit King & Godfree or order online from Nick's.


We may all lament the closure of Nic Poelaert's Embrasse in Carlton, but the good news is that Nic has teamed up with Gerald and Mario from Gerald's Bar to bring us Brooks of Melbourne, in the slick city basement (formerly the old MoMo, then Fifteen, then The Kitchen Cat) underneath the Hermes boutique on Collins Street. The space is warm, the service gets that balance between old-school professional and personable warmth just right, and Nic's food gets a chance to shine.

Some of the menu items are more snacky and informal than his previous offerings, like the 'cheeky bun' (I opted for the vegetarian version over the meat burger, and loved it), but some of the favourites from Embrasse have survived the move, including the exquisite méli-mélo of 25 vegetables (Nic's souvenir of his time at Michel Bras' eponymous restaurant in Laguiole, France), the cheesy potato mash aligot and the 'forest floor' dessert. Of the newer dishes I've tried, the broad bean soup with black olive and olive oil is superb. Afraid I haven't listed prices because I couldn't track them down online, but know that their five couse chef's menu is excellent value at $80 a head - get on it, people.



As much as I've enjoyed the restaurant menu at Pei Modern (the entree of Dutch cream potatoes, bone marrow, coffee and mojama and the dessert of caramelised tomato stuffed with 12 spices are must-order items, in my book), I keep coming back to the smart bar menu. Highlights on the Pei bar menu include the O'Connor steak tartare ($18.50) and the Ortiz anchovy shortbread with Parmesan custard ($4.50 each).


David's, the Shanghai mainstay of Melbourne's southside, has had a stunning refurb after 15 years in Prahran. Rebadged as David’s Country Shanghai, the restaurant's interior has been transformed into an airy, sunlit space and its menu has been revamped to include some contemporary as well as traditional dishes, skewed to the more casual end of the dining spectrum. My picks are the steamed bao (two for $10 and a selection to choose from) and the Gong Bo chicken pictured below ($19), stir-fried with radish, cucumber, chilli, garlic and a whole lotta Sichuan peppercorns.


After years of listening to Sydneysiders waxing rhapsodic about how great the roti was at Sydney's Mamak restaurants, Melbourne got a Mamak of its own on Lonsdale Street. The roti canai ($5.50) really is very good - fluffy and crispy without being oily, and with just enough chew. While I was underwhelmed by the kari ikan (fish curry), I rated the chicken satay sticks ($9). And if you want to double down on the roti, make sure you also order the sweet version filled with kaya (pandan and coconut).


This was the second year I attended the Christmas Cookoff held annually by 310Fitzroy and some other lovely friends of mine. My entries this year: Beetroot Gravlax (adapting an excellent recipe in issue 16 of the SBS Feast Magazine) and the Iced Horchata recipe recently featured on Trotski & Ash. I was equally pleased by how both recipes turned out!



Links of Note:

- Sad to read on George Biron's blog that he and his wife are putting their restaurant Sunnybrae on the market in 2013. Hoping that some brilliant chef looking for a change snaps up the opportunity: it's one helluva setup they've got down there at Birregurra (I wrote glowing words about my visit here).

- An inspiring post on Talor Browne's blog about how her quest for excellence in specialty coffee, dating from when St Ali was sold in 2006, has taken her from Melbourne to Paris to Oslo.

- The Melbourne Coffee Review has a bit of a rant about the Melbourne specialty coffee scene and rival coffee publications/apps.

- Ms Stickifingers wrote an excellent primer post on social media for food and beverage businesses on her blog Deep Dish Dreams. Essential reading for anyone in the hospo industry who doesn't understand how social media works.

- "The notion of 'sustainable seafood' is arguably the most misunderstood, misguided, poorly managed and hypocritical debate in food." A contentious article by John Susman in this month's foodService.

- Cocktail enthusiasts should check out Only Bitters, a new Australian online store that retails over 100 varieties of cocktail bitters and will soon also sell commercial batches of 'perfect' cocktail cherries that the Melbourne owners of the site have made themselves.

- Reviews of Melbourne's best pubs can be found on the PubStars website.

- I've been enjoying reading Alex's writing on tsp. (The Sad Pig), whether it's lamenting the lost days of good menu writing or slipping in a reference to Paul Simon lyrics in a macaroon vs macaron treatise.

- On the Anatomy of Thrift: Pork Provendor in the Home Kitchen video posts. How to love pigs, and living.

- A jukeboxed American-style diner in a decommissioned Melbourne train carriage in Cabramatta? Grab Your Fork dishes the dirt.

Merry Christmas everyone! xx Claire