A night of no bookings: Gigibaba and Rosamond

So, the no-bookings thing. It's been mentioned as the one of the next Melbourne restaurant trends every year for the last three years in the Epicure's annual "dining trends" wrap-ups, and The Age keeps running what is essentially the same story about whether or not a hot new Melbourne restaurant's refusal to take bookings is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.

I tend to come down on the side of it being a Good Thing, but think places like MoVida Aqui do it best by offering bookings for half the restaurant (the tables) and no-bookings for the other half (the bar and tall tables along the windows). Everybody wins!

Best-friend-K and I are making a habit of going out for no-bookings dinners together on Thursday nights. This week we decided at the last minute to cumulus it up (walked in at 6:45 and got the last two seats without having to wait, SCORE!)... I'd write a post about it, but I've already written enough slobbering loveletters to Cumulus Inc on the blog, so let me just say: their new dish of globe artichokes and asparagus barigoule with salt cod aioli and a soft boiled egg is *extremely* good.

But the Thursday before, we'd decided on a no-bookings double feature on Smith Street, with savoury at Gigibaba and sweet at Rosamond.

Gigibaba
102 Smith Street, Collingwood (map)
9486 0345

I hadn't been to Gigibaba since my (one and only) visit in April 2009, and I was keen to head back there to give Ismail Tosun's Turkish food another try. Thankfully, my new camera is much better at coping with Gigibaba's lighting conditions than its predecessor.


The no-bookings gods were smiling upon us as b-f-K had managed to grab a perch at the bar without waiting. We ordered a few beers and started the night with a lovely simple dish of smoked eggplant, tomato, roast peppers, pinenuts and currants ($14).


B-f-K insisted we get the rose-scented beetroot with chard and walnut ($14). Rose and beetroot seemed like an unlikely pairing to me, but they worked together beautifully.


We also shared a serve of barbecued hellim cheese (aka haloumi), accompanied by a sticky, sweet, spiced medjool date ($10). Another great combination.


The chicken, black olive and mint borek topped with a slow poached egg ($18) was probably my favourite dish that we ordered - the pastry in particular was superb. As our waitress brought the dish over to us at the bar, the egg slid gracefully off the borek with a gentle plop. Being slow poached, the egg just sort of pouted yolk at us rather than dribbling everywhere, so we scooped it back up onto the borek and pretended nothing had happened. But that's the reason for the somewhat haphazard presentation in the photo below.

Slow cooked eggs are cropping up on menus everywhere these days. A Melbourne food trend I'm very happy about.


I love Gigibaba's blue, red and white colour-coded bookshelves for cookbooks.


Our no-bookings karma had to run out at some point. There was a wait of over half an hour for a table at Rosamond, but we were happy to leave a mobile phone number and repair to Panama Dining Room for a while, where we could sip glasses of Prosecco, plan overseas holidays and look out over the Collingwood skyline through the floor-to-ceiling Play School arched windows.

Cafe Rosamond
Rear 191 Smith Street, Fitzroy (map)
9419 2270

I've also written about Pierre Roelofs' dessert evenings every Thursday at Rosamond before, but the brand new menu each week means you're always in for a surprise. You can order one, two or all three of that week's dishes, plus each week there's also a different dessert tube (containing four different elements in cross-section... just hold it up to your lips and suck).

Pierre gives his loyal fans advance notice via Twitter of what the dessert tube will be each week, and on the week we were going I was excited to hear that it'd be a snickers tube - layers of chocolate, nougat, caramel and peanuts. Giddy up. Reminded of other Melbourne chef Philippa Sibley's famous snickers dessert, I went over to have a chat to Pierre and learned that a group of people who work with Philippa were seated at the table next to mine!


We had two of the dessert dishes, the first involving berries and bubblegum. I'm not much of a bubblegum fan (and I'm a little hazy now about exactly what elements were involved in the dish), but I just loved the presentation.


The other dessert was served in an old-school cut glass bowl (with a doily underneath!) and contained a fabulous jumble of elements including pandan, coffee and whisky spheres (made using a bottle of whisky the rarely-drinking Pierre was given for Christmas). But what elevated this dish from delicious and interesting to JUST INSANE was the addition of chocolate coated "explosive rock candy". I hadn't had any form of carbonated candy since I had Pop Rocks as a kid. Talk about having a party in your mouth!


Pierre showed me the jar of explosive rock candy (imported from Spain) and enthusiastically explained to me the science involved in making it. Crazy stuff!


So where should we go for our next no-bookings Thursday?

Five fabulous flavours from the last fortnight I feel compelled to share with you

It's been a busy couple of weeks for me at work, but I wanted to write a few short paragraphs about five dishes I've been lucky enough to have over the last fortnight that have been just a little bit special.


One: the elotes callejeros at Mamasita.

Mamasita
Level 1, 11 Collins Street, Melbourne (map)
9650 3821


Lunch last Tuesday was at Mamasita with the beautiful KT. I wrote about Mamasita when it first opened in February, but on that visit I neglected to order what has now become my favourite Mamasita dish, the elotes callejeros ($3.80 each). Chargrilled corn with queso, chipotle mayonnaise and lime. DROOL. If you don't like these... I don't think we can be friends any more.


Two: the primo piatto of pickled green tomatoes and burrata at Ladro.

Ladro (Gertrude)
224 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy (map)
9415 7575


Best-friend-K and I went to Ladro on Friday night. While we were sipping negronis and waiting for our pizze to arrive, we shared an exquisite entree of pickled green tomatoes served with burrata and drizzled with olive oil ($12.50). Burrata (a mozzarella cheese with a gooey mozzarella-and-cream centre) seems to be everywhere at the moment. Served with mouth-watering sweet and sour pickled green tomatoes? Perfect.



Three: my mother's pasta al forno con funghi, spinaci e sugo di carne.

To taste this one, you'll have to cajole your way into my family. On Wednesday night we facilitated a birthday face-to-face Skype chat between my Nonna and Nonno in Melbourne, and Nonna's sister Zia Clara and Zio Mario in Italy ("Che meraviglia, questo Skype!" my Nonno kept exclaiming). For dinner afterwards, Mum made her special pasta al forno. To stop it from being too heavy or stodgy, she alternates pasta layers: one with Nonna's fresh sugo bolognese and mushrooms sauteed with her secret ingredient (a quarter of a Star funghi porcini stock cube, shhhhh), and then one with béchamel and spinach wilted with smoked garlic. Parmigiano between every layer, natch!



Four: the grass fed steak tartare at Cumulus Inc.

Cumulus Inc
45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (map)
9650 1445


I know I've waxed lyrical about Cumulus several times over, but as I was on my way there last Thursday to meet the lovely Emily from ...It Pleases Us, I realised this would be the first time I'd ever visited for lunch. I ain't gonna lie: I was nursing a hangover. A hangover that called for something drastic. Hmmmm oh I don't know, how about the GRASS FED STEAK TARTARE?

My fuzzy logic told me that if raw steak ($21) couldn't make me feel better, nothing would. And oh it was good, people. We also shared one of my favourite Cumulus dishes, the wagyu bresaola with fresh horseradish ($14, alas sadly no longer served with remoulade) and Em's favourite, the crispy school prawns sauteed with chilli and garlic ($14). Be sure to eat those suckers in their entirety, as they were intended.



Five: the dessert sticks (hell, and everything else) at Pierre Roelofs' dessert evenings at Cafe Rosamond.

Cafe Rosamond
Rear 191 Smith Street, Fitzroy (map)
9419 2270


Count me in as a member of Pierre Roelofs' enthusiastic cheer squad. His are the most creative, exciting desserts currently on offer in Melbourne. Last month I wrote a loveletter to the event he and Raúl Moreno Yagüe held at the MFWF, and I mentioned his forthcoming dessert-only Thursday evenings at Cafe Rosamond. They started this week, and I trotted along with Jess.

I'm telling you, if you're anywhere near Smith Street on a Thursday night, you HAVE to drop in to Rosamond for dessert. There are no bookings, so just rock up between 7 and 11 and hopefully manage to snare a seat (there are only 25). Order tea or coffee and either one, two or three dishes ($20/$30/$40 - great value considering the number of elements, quality ingredients and time-consuming techniques involved in the creation of each dish).

We had two each. One had a cube of pear pound cake, toasted couscous, honey cream that was just madness, pear sorbet and toasted millet. The other was the "Black Gold" dish I wrote about in my MFWF round-up: it included poached pineapple and (SENSATIONAL) dehydrated pineapple, rigatoni filled with mascarpone, syphon coffee gel, ground Yirgacheffe coffee beans, gold leaf, coffee meringue, dark chocolate granules and micro leaves.

The dishes on offer will change weekly. If there's one thing you need to try though, it's one of the dessert sticks ($9 each). They are glass tubes the circumference of a cigar, filled with four different flavours, and to consume them you tip them up to your mouth and, er, suck hard for a flavour explosion. The ones we tried on Thursday were filled with dried white chocolate, peach, pistachio and rose... and I have it on good authority that next week's will contain pancake, maple syrup and banana (!!!).