Blog Amnesty: Winter Edition

It's Blog Amnesty: Winter Edition today. There are lots of things I've wanted to write up in brief on the blog, so I thought I'd put them all here in the one post. Item 1: gorgeous Bastille Day tricouleur macarons filled with vanilla butter cream and a home made raspberry jam, from Pierrick Boyer's Le Petit Gâteau. Trop mignons ces petits macarons!


Cherry Tree Hotel
53 Balmain Street, Cremorne (map)
9428 5743

Item 2: One of my favourite places to hibernate this winter is in front of the fireplace at my beloved local, The Cherry Tree (which I have previously written about here and here). On Tuesday nights, Chrus saves me the food sections of the newspapers so I can read the reviews aloud to him and either enthuse over or decry them (or sometimes both) as he serves me a beer. It's a great pub and I can recommend their shepherds pie with buttered cabbage ($16) - the best thing on their winter menu, in my opinion.


Item 3: You heard it here first. 506 Swan Street, Richmond, the site next to the Burnley netball courts that was until recently home to Indian restaurant Fuzion, is being fitted out and transformed into a brunch cafe from the team that brought you Porgie & Mr Jones. I heard this from Mr Jones himself, Jason Jones, when I had brunch at P+MJ the other week. Given that P+MJ is one of my favourite brunch destinations (previously written up here), I was delighted to hear that his new cafe will be in my neck of the 3121 woods.


Tea House at China Town
11-17 Cohen Place, Melbourne (map)
9639 2526

Item 4: Next time you want to go somewhere a bit posh in Chinatown, go down the little laneway to the Chinese Museum and visit the restaurant opposite, The Tea House at China Town. Their fluffy omelette with lobster meat ($12.50) is *sensational*. The barbequeued pigeon and steamed scallops served three ways are very good too.


MoVida Aqui
Level 1, 500 Bourke Street (access via Lt Bourke St), Melbourne (map)
9663 3038

Item 5: It's pretty easy to make me happy. For example, sit me down at the bar at MoVida Aqui with a glass of La Goya Manzanilla and a bocadillo de calamares and I am HAPPY AS A SANDBOY. But to make a visit to MoVida Aqui really *choice*, order a Martini Aqui: their crazy, fishy take on a dirty martini. Ask the charming Josh Begbie (former head bartender at Der Raum) to make it for you.


The glass is rinsed out with manzanilla rather than vermouth, and the garnish is not olives but rather a white anchovy and a pickled guindilla pepper. There ain't no anchovy like a gin-soaked anchovy! Just don't freak out when your glass ends up coated in a slight film of fishy oil.

Vegetarian drinking companions can opt to have a sans anchovy version.


Der Raum
438 Church Street, Richmond (map)
9428 0055

Speaking of Der Raum brings me to Item 6: I feel everyone needs to know immediately that the Der Raum winter cocktail menu includes a cocktail that is SERVED IN A MINIATURE WATERING CAN.

Oh yes. It's called Pushing Daisy's (sic) and it's an entirely delicious combination of Compass Box Asyla whisky, a house-made thyme syrup and a "soil" containing dark chocolate, almond and mushroom. The other cocktail from the winter menu that I just adore is the Big in Japan: made with saffron sake, Dubonnet, pressed citrus, palm sugar and artisanal winter aromatics, prepared in a coffee syphon and served warm.


Ladro (Greville)
162 Greville Street, Prahran (map)
9510 2233

Item 7: The new Ladro (in Greville Street, Prahran) opened a month or two ago. I ducked in there the other week with an American gentleman of my acquaintance, old dependable D, on our way to watch Greta Garbo movies down at the Astor.


The interior is larger but from what I could see, the decor and menu at Ladro Greville is identical to that at the original Ladro Gertrude. A word of warning - the Ladro website streams clips from Ladri di biciclette, one of the more emotionally devastating Italian neo-realist films. Proceed with caution!


Old Dependable enjoyed the pizza with mozzarella, potato, taleggio, rosemary, truffle oil and basil ($22) and I went for one I'd never had before: the Lazio with mozzarella, parsley, carciuga (artichoke and anchovy paste) and lemon ($21.50). Loved the paste and lemon combo, and the wonderfully bitter flavours in the radicchio, chicory, fennel and witlof salad ($9.50) that we shared. Definitely worth a visit if you're jonesing for pizza south of the river.


Thanh Nga Nine
160 Victoria Street, Richmond (map)
9427 7068


And Item 8: the place that's become my favourite Vietnamese on Victoria Street, Thanh Nga Nine. I've been there three or four times over the last six months, and each time the food has been excellent and the service frantic but friendly. Triet, who runs the front of house, is particularly nice and informative about the menu, which contains a number of items you don't see in your run-of-the-mill Vic Street joint.


My picks are the Sóc Trăng style mini pancakes ($9, can also be ordered as a vegetarian dish). They're made from rice flour with a crispy base, and topped with prawns, mung bean paste and tiny orange sprinkles of dried crushed prawns. Use both sauces (the fish sauce and the coconut cream) for maximum awesomeness.


My other favourite dish is one of the special dishes, the pork casserole in claypot ($25). The soy/fish sauce is sticky and the slow-cooked pork is beautifully tender.


They also do a particularly good coleslaw, about three or four different types of phở and have an extensive vegetarian menu. And I'm yet to visit upstairs but apparently there's free karaoke up there if you book a function. Score!

Ladies Who Lunch do dinner at MoVida Aqui

MoVida Aqui
Level 1, 500 Bourke Street (access via Lt Bourke St), Melbourne (map)
9663 3038


Having enjoyed breakfast at MoVida Terraza last month, it was only going to be a matter of time before I visited its older sibling, MoVida Aqui. One of my fellow Ladies Who Lunch, Miss T, made good her promise and took me and the other girls there for dinner just before she went overseas. Thanks, Miss T!

Thank you also to Melbourne Gastronome reader hannahbabble for giving me such great MoVida Aqui menu suggestions: as you can see, we adhered to them fairly closely. :)


I can see from the search terms being used to find this blog that many people think it's spelled "MoVida Acqui". It's not. It's MoVida Aqui.

Although the restaurant is more formal than the Terraza kiosk outside, MoVida Aqui's trendy use of plastic milk crates over the kitchen/bar and energy-saving lighting still makes it feel more canteen-like and casual than the original MoVida restaurant.


It was a damn hot day when the Ladies and I visited, so several glasses of chilled water and a big jug of white sangria was the perfect way to start us off.


Foodwise, we started with anchoas: hand filleted Cantabrian Artisan anchovies on croutons on smoked tomato sorbet ($4.50 each). I'd already tried these at MoVida in October, but couldn't resist ordering them again. That smoked tomato sorbet with the saltiness of the anchovy!! Miss L, who is NOT prone to over-exaggeration, declared it the most delicious anchovy she'd ever had.

We also ordered an ostra each - they were Coffin Bay oysters shucked to order, served with manzanilla and watermelon dressing ($3.80 each). As with the anchoa flavours, the manzanilla and watermelon together was a dazzling combination of flavours.


But here we have the tapa that really tipped me over the edge, the bocadillos de calamares ($6.50 each). They're petite calamari sandwiches which include Basque guindillas (peppers pickled in white vinegar) and mayonnaise. SO GOOD. The guindillas were wonderfully piquant and the calamari was tender and full of flavour. I wonder if they'd let you pop in and grab just one of these as an on-the-run snack??

The bocadillo was probably my favourite dish of the night.


Next up was the buey ($17.50), which consisted of "Rost Biff" wagyu with tocino de cielo (described to us in this instance as "horseradish custard"), crisps, pickled garlic and black fermented garlic. The cubes of horseradish custard were amazing, as was the black and white garlic.


The viera ($16) - scallops grilled with jamon on pisto, braised manchego style vegetables - was probably my least favourite of the dishes, in that I merely LIKED it and didn't LOVE it. I thought the ratatouille-like pisto was just a tad sharp.

But I really loved the simple asadillo salad we had on the side ($11.50): roasted capsicum and tomato with Andulacian flavours... oil, garlic, capers, parsley.


The cordoniz ($16.50) was quail charcoal grilled with housemade morcilla and chickpeas. The housemade morcilla - Spanish blood sausage - was very, very good and I loved its crumbly texture contrasted with that of the chickpeas and the juicy meat.


Our final savoury dish was the conejo agridulce ($22), Andalucian braised rabbit leg in a sweet and sour sauce with almonds and raisins. The raisins were nicely swollen with the sauce, whose honeyed aroma swept over us as I took this photo. The braised leg was soft and moist, the almonds were softened and the sauce was just sour enough. Perfect.


Nice use of wooden panels from cases of Grange!


We decided to share a few desserts between the four of us. Miss T was keen to try the arroz con leche ($12.50), which was a chilled cylinder of rice pudding sitting on a drizzle of liquor 43 sauce, surrounded by plump fresh cherries and capped with a shortbread-y polvorone biscuit. We also couldn't resist ordering some excellent churros con chocolate ($10).


We left feeling extremely happy with our meal. There's still lots on the menu I'm keen to try (such as the xato, the gamabas a la sidra and the choco), so I foresee a return visit in the near future...