Shortstop Coffee & Donuts comes to Melbourne (batter up)

Shortstop Coffee & Donuts
12 Sutherland Street, Melbourne (map)
9642 0807
Open Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 4:30pm
Website, Facebook, Twitter, Urbanspoon


Yesterday saw the soft opening of Shortstop Coffee & Donuts, a cafe in a sidestreet off Little Lonsdale bringing next-next-level donuts to the hungry masses. Shortstop is the brainchild of Anthony Ivey (who just under a year ago teamed up with the guys from Doughboys Doughnuts to run Melbourne's first coffee-and-donuts pop-up) and his kitchen guru Sinye Ooi. Open Monday to Friday (sorry, weekenders), but with plans to open on weekends down the track.


Much like Anthony's previous longtime employer Market Lane Coffee (which serves specialty coffee, no decaf, no skinny milk, no tea), Shortstop has a similar purity of vision coupled with an absolute dedication to quality. They do excellent coffee and they do excellent donuts, and that's the whole menu. The meticulous consideration that Anthony and his team have given every step of the project - the extensive overseas research followed by months of recipe testing, the selection of flavours and ingredients, the chic fitout, the branding etc - has been evident to those of us who've followed Shortstop's realisation over the last year. The coffee is Market Lane, natch, and you can have it black or with Schultz organic milk.


In addition to the fluffy yeast-raised ring and filled donuts more commonly seen around Melbourne, Shortstop is serving cake donuts (made from a moist crumb cake batter) and French cruller donuts (made from choux pastry and piped by hand). I tried a few cake donuts on my US trip last year and wanted to reacquaint myself, so I tried the beautifully perfumed Earl Grey and rose: Earl Grey cake with an injection of lemon myrtle and a rose water and rose petal icing. What really stood out for me was the nuanced flavour of the dough - in my experience, some of the other fancy donut places around town tend to coast on the flavour in their glazes or toppings, with somewhat flavourless dough. That wasn't the case here.


I also had a taste of the banana and chocolate hazelnut cake donut (I'm breaking my usual rule about photos of half-eaten food in order to show you the banana cream custard hiding inside). Shortstop makes its gianduja (Nutella-like spread) from scratch. Totally worth the sugar headache I had later in the day.


A heads up before you visit: don't be surprised if there's a queue. And although the generously staffed kitchen will be baking fresh batches of donuts continuously throughout the day, some flavours will probably be unavailable when you saunter in. The good news? To be guaranteed the flavours you want, you can pre-purchase your donuts the day before (orders placed by 1pm can be collected the next day; minimum of 5 donuts per order) via Shortshop's nifty website. Everybody wins!

Top three city venues for ramen in Melbourne

It pains me to admit it, but the ramen in Sydney has always been better than the ramen in Melbourne. Until about a year ago, going out for ramen in Melbourne was a regular exercise in disappointment: at Kokoro the broths were too salty, at Ramen Ya the egg was hard-boiled (nooooooo!) and the watery broths were often served lukewarm, and at Ajisen the noodles were soggy. Fast-forward to 2014 and the state of ramen in Melbourne has improved a great deal - these are the three venues in the CBD where I will happily order ramen.

Fukuryu Ramen
22-26 Corrs Lane, Melbourne (map)
9090 7149
Open Monday to Sunday 11:30am - 2:30pm and 5:30pm - 9:30pm
Website


Fukuryu ("lucky dragon") Ramen opened just two weeks ago, but I've already dined there multiple times. It's located in Chinatown's Corrs Lane between Brutale and Sichuan House, occupying a large, pristine warehouse space on the second floor with west-facing windows. Jeff and Yenny Tsao have opened the restaurant with partners from Hakata Ikkousha Group Indonesia, a group with ramen restaurants all over Asia. Staff are very polite and enthusiastic.


The broth, the broth! It was the best tonkotsu I've had in Melbourne, with plenty of depth and pork and garlic. My friend's miso ramen with butter and corn was also excellent, the noodles were not-too-soggy-not-too-bouncy, and the ajitama (marinated soft-boiled egg) was gloriously gooey. While the bowls are a bit smaller than at other ramen joints, they're priced accordingly ($8.90-$9.90, and you don't have to pay extra for the ajitama) and are a good size for those of us who have to concentrate at our desks after lunch. Fukuryu is gradually rolling out an expanded izakaya menu, and until 7 April the soft-serve green tea ice cream is free.


Mensousai Mugen
11 Bligh Place, Melbourne (map)
9620 3647 or 9620 9000
Open Monday to Friday 11:30am-2:30pm and 6pm-11pm, Saturday 6pm-11pm, closed Sunday
Website


Yoshi Kurosawa, who owns longtime favourite Robot Bar in Bligh Place, opened Mensousai Mugen just across the way in November. While Mugen offers izakaya dishes and regular bowls of ramen, their specialty is tsukemen (dipping ramen): thicker noodles served cold on a plate with chashu pork, nori and pickled bamboo shoots, all of which are dipped in a thickened, strongly-seasoned sauce made from pork, chicken and dried fish to deliver an umami KAPOW. When you've finished dipping, a delicate dashi is added to the sauce to make a hot, sippable broth. It's a terrific variant on ramen.


The kitchen is at ground level, but the dining area is downstairs in a small, bunker-chic room with kozyndan art prints on one wall and looped Kurosawa movies on the other. There's also a good range of Coedo beers, including the Beniaka brewed from Kintoki sweet potatoes.



Little Ramen Bar
346 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne (map)
9670 5558
Open Monday to Saturday 11:30am-2:30pm and 5:30pm-9:30pm, closed Sunday
Website


Less flashy than the new kids on the block Fukuryu and Mugen, quiet achiever Little Ramen Bar opened a year ago, occupying a tiny shopfront on Little Bourke Street. They dole out consistently good broths and bouncy noodles - my favourite order is the buttery miso ramen with added ajitama and lashings of kimchi. Prices are up there (ramen $9.90-$14.50 plus any extras) but the ramen servings are enormous, the gyoza are top-notch and there's fresh Sapporo Draught on tap.


Got a favourite CBD ramen joint that isn't listed here? Tell me which one it is.

Sezar introduces Melbourne to Armenian barbecue

Sezar
6 Melbourne Place, Melbourne (map)
9663 9882
Open for dinner Monday-Saturday 5:30-10:30pm, lunch Thursday-Friday 12-3pm
website, facebook, twitter


Melbourne doesn't get much exposure to Armenian cuisine. At Sezar, the Armenian restaurant that opened late last year, the front of house staff describe it as a blend of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine (if you'd like some geographic indicators, Armenia borders Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia). Judging from the menu, the food at Sezar skews more towards the Middle Eastern than the Med, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients rather than going overboard on spices. The menu also features lots of khorovadz - Armenian barbecue - dishes cooked on a custom charcoal pit.

Chef and co-owner Garen Maskal (head chef at The Black Toro in Glen Waverley and former sous at Ezard) has drawn on his Armenian heritage in adapting some of his grandmother's recipes for contemporary Melbourne diners, and he's installed fellow Ezard alum Franc Bakkes in the kitchen. The restaurant site (previously Saint Peter's Trattoria and the Canary Club) is tucked down an alleyway in which a street art mural of Haik Nahapet, warrior-founder of Armenia, points the way.

As is so often the way these days, the menu is split into small, large and side sharing dishes, with a $65 banquet option. My dinner date and I started with the substantial falafel with spanner crab, iceberg tabbouleh and a drizzle of tahini, served on a spongey Armenian flatbread ($17 for two). We highly recommend this dish.


We ordered a trio of khorovadz dishes to see what this charcoal pit could do: shiitake mushrooms with haloumi and onion on shashlik skewers with grape leaf wraps ($14 for two), lamb kebab with baby gem lettuce and a sour cherry sauce ($19 for two), and eggplant with buttermilk yoghurt, barberries and a fistful of fresh herbs including mint and parsley ($22). We loved the first two (especially with the accompanying grape leaf wraps and the sour cherry sauce) but felt let down by the rather bland eggplant, which needed a salty punch to balance out the buttermilk yoghurt.




Dessert was a pide (the Armenian version is bread-ier than your usual pide, and pre-baked then warmed rather than cooked to a crisp), covered with a terrific combination of Nutella ganache, hazelnuts, freeze dried berries, white chocolate jelly and fresh basil ($14).


The licensed restaurant has the advantage of being open on a Monday night, and on the Monday my date and I visited the joint was buzzing. We enjoyed Sezar's fresh take on Middle Eastern dining and I look forward to their upstairs cocktail bar opening in March.

From Red Spice Road to Burma Lane

Burma Lane
118 Little Collins Street, Melbourne (map)
9615 8500
Open Monday-Friday 12-3pm and 6pm-late, Saturday 6pm-late
Website, Facebook, Twitter, Urbanspoon



With the just-opened Burma Lane, the Apples and Pears Entertainment Group promised a modern, Australian take on the best of Burmese cuisine, and it looks like they've delivered. Unlike the Group's other Red Spice Road restaurants, where the emphasis is on sharing large plates, here the menu is structured more in the Chin Chin mould, with several small bites, a few noodles, a few salads, and half a dozen bigger bites in which curries feature prominently. The drinks list includes a selection of lassis, and any cocktail list that includes a 'Margaret Pomeranz' (Tromba Blanco tequila, pomegranate liqueur and lemon juice, in case you were wondering) gets a thumbs up from me.

I wandered in for lunch yesterday and started with a hard-to-go-wrong kun sar thi ($4.50) betel leaf with shredded chicken, shallot, green mango and Sichuan pepper. And as it's virtually impossible at this time of year to not order broad beans when they're on a menu, I ordered a tasty little broad bean fritter with crunchy broad beans and spinach relish ($4.50).



For the Kachin beef salad ($16), the beef is slow-cooked and then pounded in a mortar and pestle with the spices and herbs, which include sawtooth coriander, chilli and Sichuan pepper (the northernmost province of Burma, Kachin, shares a border with China). The pounding that the beef takes gives it a wonderfully tender texture, and the fresh herbs, onion and belachan gave it a big flavour punch. Highly recommended.


The Little Collins St space that was Mahjong Black was a bit of a tricky site, at once shiny and gloomy. The new owners have lightened the place up, and will continue to tweak the interior over the next year. The main focal points are the Shepard Fairey street arty portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi that watches over the restaurant from above the stairs, and the bird cage chandeliers. The floor staff are skilled at explaining some of the more unfamiliar elements of chef Adam Trengrove's Burmese menu, and the restaurant seems to have all the elements in place that have made its Red Spice Road siblings successful.

Doughboys Doughnuts pop-up in Melbourne CBD

Doughboys Doughnuts pop-up at Mr Nice Guy Thai
Shop J, 535 Little Lonsdale Street (enter via Healeys Lane), Melbourne (map)
9973 1761
Doughboys Doughnuts pop-up open 7-11am Monday-Friday (and maybe weekends in the future)
Mr Nice Guy Thai open lunch and dinner Monday-Friday, dinner only on weekends
website
UPDATE: Doughboys Doughnuts ended their pop-up at Mr Nice Guy Thai, but are now having a summer residency at the Mercat Cross Hotel, 456 Queen Street Melbourne - see their FB page for details and opening hours.


Popping up in the mornings for the next month or two at Mr Nice Guy Thai (the cute CBD sister cafe of Middle Fish) comes Doughboys Doughnuts, serving $4.80 doughnuts baked fresh from quality ingredients and "dipped on demand" with insanely sugary glazes. Joining them is Anthony from Market Lane Coffee, serving up ML coffee ($4) with characteristic skill and aplomb.


I recently returned from a five week trip to the US, where I tried the best do(ugh)nuts in Portland and San Francisco (respectively, Blue Star Donuts and Dynamo Donuts) which came in brilliant flavour combinations like cornmeal rosemary cherry, lemon Sichuan, and dulce de leche with hazelnut. The flavours at Doughboys Doughnuts are not quite as zany, but hoo boy they taste really, really good. Today's flavours were orange-zested vanilla icing with crushed up pistachios, dark Monsieur Truffe cocoa with crushed walnuts and hazelnuts, and lemon and lime zested icing with toasted coconut. They don't come any fresher than this.



Anthony mentioned to me that depending on how things go, they may end up opening for doughnuts on weekends too. Watch this space, non-city workers. Expect this one to be very, very popular - and if your heart is set on a doughnut you may want to call in advance to make sure they haven't already sold out.

(*cough* For those who, like me, aren't eating much sugar these days, you might want to approach with caution - I ate the equivalent of one doughnut by sampling the three flavours with two friends, and have been in a light-headed sugar daze for the last few hours...)

UPDATE: Doughboys Doughnuts ended their pop-up at Mr Nice Guy Thai, but are now having a summer residency at the Mercat Cross Hotel, 456 Queen Street Melbourne - see their FB page for details and opening hours.

From New York to Melbourne with love: new cafe Bowery to Williamsburg

Bowery to Williamsburg
16 Oliver Lane, Melbourne (map)
9077 0162
Open 7:30am-3:30pm Monday-Friday, cash and walk-ins only
twitter

It's been a great week for the sandwich lovers of Melbourne's Paris end. Last Tuesday EARL Canteen opened its long-awaited second store in the Collins Place food court (directly under Pei Modern). I can't tell you how glad I am that they're now located a mere block away from my office building.

And then on Monday a new cafe opened in Oliver Lane, the cobblestoned laneway off Flinders Lane that also houses Coda. Brought to you by Will and Di (the couple who brought you The Hardware Societe), the cafe is called Bowery to Williamsburg and as the subway-inspired name suggests, it's going to put Melbourne in a New York state of mind.


Will and Di have made three trips to NYC over the last couple of years, planning the Bowery to Williamsburg concept. The care they've taken in realising their vision is evident in the fitout, which is elegantly understated yet cosy even on a three degree Melbourne morning.


BAGELS! In keeping with the New York deli theme, there are several varieties of bagel on offer - both savoury and sweet - all made by 5 and Dime. Start your day with a sour cherry bagel with a schmear of lemon curd, or perhaps a beetroot and rye bagel with a cream cheese schmear. There are cooked breakfasts too, like poached eggs with maple baked beans and a bacon slab.


Lunchwise, it's one of those sandwich menus you'll agonise over for minutes because they all sound so damn good. Will it be the Reuben, the pastrami on rye? The lox bagel with beetroot horseradish, limed onion, watercress and dill cream cheese schmear? The schmaltz chicken on walnut bread with apple celeriac slaw and prune relish??


For a set price of $16.50 you get a sandwich plus a side plus pretzels and a pickle (or pay $12.50 just for the sandwich, gluten free bread available for $1 extra). In the end I picked a sandwich almost at random, winding up with the superb hot smoked salmon on rye with heirloom tomato, fried capers, radish and a caviar cream cheese schmear, with a zingy little side salad of zucchini, peas and Persian feta.


Last but most definitely not least are the sweets, all of which are baked on the premises. It's a veritable AMERICANA CORNUCOPIA, featuring New York cheesecake, key lime pie, caramelised pumpkin pie, vanilla cherry pie, maple pecan pie, s'mores bars and choc-blueberry brownies. I had a little taste of the maple pecan pie and it was heaven.


The coffee is Padre, but you might be tempted by a peanut butter hot chocolate (served with a Reese's PB cup). At this early stage they're only open Monday to Friday, but fingers crossed that weekends will follow soon. Bowery to Williamsburg is a VERY welcome addition to the CBD.

No seriously, get down to Hihou to try the lunch menu

Hihou
Level 1, 1 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (map)
9654 5465
Open for lunch Monday to Friday 11:30am-2:30pm, evenings Monday to Saturday 5pm-1am
website


It's been nearly a year since Simon Denton, Takashi Omi and Miyuki Nakahara opened their elegant, Japanese-influenced bar Hihou above their more casual canteen Nama Nama. For all of that time, Hihou (an approximate pronunciation is "he-haw" - it means treasure in Japanese) has been a strictly evenings-only affair, serving a compact menu of bar snacks to accompany your Negro-Kan (Negroni with an umeshu twist).

Recently Hihou decided to take full advantage of its daytime view overlooking Treasury Gardens, and started opening for lunch on Mondays to Fridays. While the menu features freshly shucked Coffin Bay oysters, charcoal barbequed prawns and sashimi, the main focus is the two course set lunch - which at $35 a head represents terrific value, given the attention to detail and quality of the produce on offer.

Simon invited me as a guest to sample the lunch menu the week it opened, but I went back again last week with my lunch date as paying customers, because we couldn't stop raving about the experience and how perfectly balanced the meal had been.


The set lunch begins with a little appetiser, such as grapes with shiro-ae (a white tofu dressing) and buckwheat, or pickled wombok with kaffir lime and dainty ribbons of wonton crisps.


The hassun first course is a selection of cold starters that represent the season. Expect to see sashimi (the John Dory we had on our first visit was exceptionally good) and vegetables, perhaps with seafood-y accents like scallops or miniature house-dried prawns.


For the main course you choose from one of three sets, each made with premium produce. The kodawari set, which I ordered on my first visit, included delicate sous vide Tasmanian red bream and soy beans in a mild gin-an sauce, with miso soup and rice.


The shichirin set, ordered on my second visit, included charcoal grilled (and beautifully tender) Cape Grim Beef rump with green tea salt, grilled daikon, yakiniku dipping sauce, sumashi clear soup and brown rice.


The set lunch finishes with tea or coffee. I *strongly* recommend shelling out a little more for dessert from the lacquered three-tiered treat box that will be laid out before you. The treat box is filled with all kinds of goodies, from traditional Japanese sweets to Western petits fours with a Japanese spin (such as tartlets filled with yuzu instead of lemon). The treats are $3-$5 each, or a plate of five for $18.


I couldn't resist ordering the sweet potato wrapped in miso paper, and the chestnut and buckwheat steamed manju. Both were exquisite.


And how kawaiiiii is this pumpkin-shaped shiro-an (white bean paste) wagashi?!


It's great to see one of my favourite city bars becoming one of my favourite city lunch spots, and there's talk that in the near future Hihou may also open in the afternoons, offering a Japanese version of high tea. Here's hoping.

A note for the uninitiated: entry to Hihou is via the (unmarked) first door on Flinders Lane. Press the buzzer and you will be ushered in.

A note for herbivores: while the three main course options on the current menu contain either meat or seafood, the kitchen will happily provide a vegetarian option.