A little bit of this, a little bit of that

In an attempt to clear some of the blog backlog, here's an odds 'n ends post about a few places I've been to lately, with a few other photos (that I've been wanting an excuse to include on the blog) thrown in for good measure... starting with a shot of my new teapot, given to my by Mum and Dad for my birthday. Made from fine Gien china and featuring the incomparable Petit Prince, c'est complètement adorable, n'est-ce pas?

Red Mullet Fish Caf
210 Glenferrie Rd, Malvern (map)
9500 9338
Thanks to eagle-eyed Chian who'd spotted that I originally had an incorrect address!



The ridiculously bountiful Seafood Platter for Two (!!) at Red Mullet, a fish caf in Glenferrie Road Malvern. It's $90 and can feed an army - having had some entrees of whitebait and salt and pepper squid, we ordered two of the platters for eight of us and were quite unable to finish them. Bloody good though - I even braved the mussels, despite my crippling fear of them (baaaaad moules-related food poisoning many years ago in Montmartre) and they were delicious! Oysters, prawns, smoked trout, steamed mussels (onion, white wine, fennel), smoked salmon, fried Blue Grenadier, grilled Trevally, steamed crab (tomato and chilli), seafood skewers of scallops and prawns, calamari rings, etc etc etc!

Don Too
6/340 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne (map)
9679 7113

Beetroot
123 Hardware St, Melbourne (map)
9600 0695



The Don Too/Beetroot lunch combination remains as fabulous as ever. I'm thrilled to report that since I last blogged about the combo and bitched about the fact that the Beetroot staff refused to serve us at 1:45pm if we were "just" getting coffees, Beetroot has undergone a change of ownership and the lovely new guys running it are more than happy to serve us. And of course, they've kept the sensational hot chocolates topped with Persian fairy floss on the menu!

Don Too likewise continues to excite. Last time I tried the Seared Tuna Steak Salad special (above), costing all of $8 and served with tofu, veggies, balsamic soy dressing and a side serve of rice and shimaya shibazuke (purple pickled cucumber that I CANNOT get enough of). Highly highly recommended!


A panna cotta production line we had going at a recent family lunch with Nonna and Nonno chez Mum and Dad.

City Wine Shop
159 Spring St, Melbourne (map)
9654 6657


On Friday I'd arranged to meet O, freshly arrived back from a trip to the UK, USA and Nicaragua, for a drink at Seamstress. While waiting in the cocktail bar for O, I bumped into Ed, who was meeting stickyfingers and the gobbler - it was quite the mini food bloggers meet-up! O and I joined the fellow bloggers and we all sampled the Seamstress tasting platter, then afterwards O and I sauntered over to the City Wine Shop for a champagne nightcap. O very naughtily shouted the two of us a bottle of the 1998 Pol Roger *, which was out of this world. Drinking champagne that nice makes me regret every glass of cheap nasty bubbly I've ever drunk! The Wine Shop staff were SO lovely - when we requested the 1998 vintage and they had to phone upstairs to retrieve the last bottle, the chap serving us asked "While we're waiting for the bottle to be fetched, can I offer you a taste of something interesting and white?", and provided us with two half glasses (a German Riesling and a Peninsula unwooded Chardonnay) on the house. Now that's service!

* Rumpole (you know who you are) has been complaining that for a former winemaking student, I write bugger all on my blog about wine... this is true. But Rumps, as you read far more about wine than I do, I reckon it's you who should be starting a grog blog called Melbourne Vinophile! :)

Lunch with Dad at Beetroot

Beetroot
123 Hardware St, Melbourne (map)
9600 0695


Hmm, I think Beetroot falls just outside the "very quick easy distance" radius from the office to qualify as part of my "King / Bourke" quest. Nevertheless, I'm here to report on some of the goodies they're serving up at the moment from their treasure trove of a display cabinet.

I went to Beetroot a few weeks ago to meet my Dad for lunch. Beetroot is north of Lonsdale St, where Hardware Lane becomes Hardware Street. Having foolishly stopped for a quick browse of the new release albums in the excellent Discurio a few doors down, I arrived a few minutes late and found Dad waiting for a table in the packed cafe.

I've read and heard very good things about Beetroot's fabulous-looking breakfast menu, and am determined to get down there early sometime soon. For lunch, we made our choices from the aforementioned display cabinet: I chose the eggplant bake, and Dad chose the stuffed capsicum, washed down by glasses of pinot noir - so nice for a cafe-looking place such as this to have a half-decent wine list!

This eggplant bake was brilliant! It was a variant on cannelloni in that there were rolls filled with spinach and ricotta, but instead of pasta the rolls were made of eggplant. The tomato-based sauce was lovely and rich, and the filling was studded with all sorts of juicy little nuggets like currants and pine nuts.

Dad's stuffed capsicum was also "a cut above", to use his words. It was made interesting by tiny bits of chopped chorizo in addition to the usual meatloaf-like filling. Both dishes, as you can see, also came with a nice bit of salad on the side.

But what really made this gastronome's day was the hot chocolate. At Beetroot it comes in either white, milk or dark chocolate, and they use proper rich chocolate at the bottom of the glass and hot frothed milk over the top so you can mix it all together or, if you're like me, try to scoop up as much of the melting milk chocolate as possible with your tall spoon. A friendly little chocolate freckle on the side of the plate is a cute touch, but the piece de resistance is the marvellously over-the-top wisp of Persian fairy floss that perches on top. Pretentious? Yes. Did I love it? Most definitely!