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Seamstress
113 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne (map)
9663 6363Last week I was trying to decide on a venue for my birthday drinks (which were on Friday but I won't blog about that night as the event did not involve much in the way of food, just many, many gin and tonics plus a bizarre wasabi-spiked Bloody Mary I will never let James buy for me EVER again).
Before Christmas, best-friend-K and I had been planning on visiting Seamstress as one of her colleagues had been raving about it, but what with the Yuletide whirlwind we didn't manage it, and then they were closed for two weeks. But last Tuesday, we visited Seamstress to (a) sample the Cantonese cuisine Agnes reviewed, and (b) check out the upstairs cocktail bar as a potential birthday drinks venue.
Seamstress is the baby of Jason Chan (Batch, 2005 Barista of the Year) and Anthony Herzog (former sommelier at Pearl). The building is four stories high: basement bar (yet to open), ground floor kitchen, first floor dining room and top floor kitchen. Each floor has tasteful furnishings which subtly evoke the building's rag trade past. I do wish the lighting in the restaurant hadn't been so bloody dim, though! Maybe I really do need to suck it up and invest in a better camera (or even a mini fits-in-the-handbag tripod??)...
Before our entrees arrived we were given little bowls of simple but nourishing broth as an appetiser.
Like a fool, I didn't jot down the names of what we had, so I've discussed it this evening with K but forgive me if I get any details wrong. These are the Tailor Dumplings, which had a prawn (and possibly also crab) filling. They were exquisite - the casing was silky and the dipping sauce particularly good.
The other entree was rare duck with pickled chillies wrapped in crispy chicken skin ($16). Our waiter had nodded sagely as we ordered it, saying he thought it was the best thing on the menu. Boy, was it good. I've always loved rare duck, but mixed in with the enoki mushrooms and tangy/spicy pickled chillies? Under a sheet of naughty naughty crispy chicken skin? Sensational. I will definitely order this one again next time I'm there.
We decided we wanted one of our mains to be chock-full of veggies - this is the Yu Xiang eggplant with grilled vegetables ($20). Less showy than the duck and the fish, but it had great, clean flavours, and there was plenty of sauce underneath that we could mop up with our rice.
The previous dishes were all well and good, but this fish was definitely the show-stopper. Crispy fried whole snapper with tangy green mango salad ($32, I think). Although it was superficially similar to a crispy barra I had a few months ago at Longrain, the Seamstress version was better - the flesh was moister, the batter was lighter, the presentation was more spectacular. The green mango salad was really moreish - wish they'd also offer it as a side salad!
The fish with a few of the pieces missing, so you can see the salad and the fish spine better. There was still good flesh to be had on the spine (and the cheeks, of course).
Our one complaint relates to the wine list. The list we were presented with was slightly different to the one you see on their (understated, yet stylish) website in that there wasn't a single pinot noir for under $50 a bottle (unless you count the $28 "cheeky half", which of course turned out to be a measly little 375mL half bottle). The week before my first post-Xmas payday (damn you, monthly salary!) money was rather limited, and it was frustrating that all the wines were so pricey relative to the food prices. Maybe I'm a philistine (or maybe I'm a a snob), but I just don't like to drink complex wines when eating highly spiced Asian food - I save those wines for French or Italian (or Japanese) meals. Of course I can understand that co-owning your first restaurant and having total freedom over the wine list must be an exciting prospect, but I feel there ought to be a few wines at the cheaper end of the spectrum, eh?
And yes, the top floor cocktail bar is indeed really nice - my new favourite city bar. My photo REALLY doesn't do it justice, so look at these pics here and here. C'est cool, n'est-ce pas?
Butterfly Cafe
25 Cookson St, Camberwell (map)
9882 1649***UPDATE 11/10/08: REVIEW FOR ARCHIVE PURPOSES ONLY
It has been brought to my unhappy attention by P, a reliable source, that in the months since the new owners took over Butterfly Cafe, both the atmosphere and quality of food/coffee have gone drastically downhill, such that this review is no longer a good indication of what you can expect. If anyone cares to report with an update, please let me know!***
We went out one recent Saturday morning to Camberwell and met A and P for a catch-up brunch at Butterfly Cafe, a pint-sized cafe opposite Camberwell station. A and P are regulars at Butterfly - when they walk in the guy at the coffee machine brings them coffee the way they like it without them having to place an order, and asks them how their kids are doing.
I grew up for a few years in Camberwell, and I never would have thought daggy old Cambers would ever contain such a funky little cafe! It must be something about the proximity of the train station: it's just a stone's throw from one of my very favourite bars in Melbourne, Bar None.
Wish I'd had one of these cupcakes that were in the display cabinet. According to M's Nemesis, the cupcake flowers are made by the owner's son at the former's bequest! I'll have to ask A and P whether they know if there's any truth to this rumour...
P laconically recommended the scrambled eggs, which he had, but I had my eye on the field mushrooms with feta and thyme on toast. They were bloody brilliant! Such a good idea to add feta and thyme. I liked them so much I recreated my own version of the recipe last week.
What d'you think of the homemade version? I know it's just sliced soy and linseed bread, but using some of the tub of Persian Feta I have in the fridge plus fresh lemon thyme from my fledgling herb garden (that's my Vietnamese mint just visible in the corner of the photo), it tasted pretty fabulous if I do say so myself. Of course, I almost always use my secret weapon when frying up mushrooms. And my not-so-secret-any-more weapon is...
These porcini mushroom stock cubes are the cat's pyjamas! A quarter of a cube (ground-up and added once the mushrooms start to sweat) is a brilliant way to butch up fried mushies and give them that woodsey porcini flavour. They're also great in risotti. Imported from Italy, the Star brand porcini cubes can be tricky to hunt down (not many places stock them) - but they're worth your while, if only for the slightly demonic-looking fifties housewife on the cover!
Red Spice Road
27 McKillop St, Melbourne (map)
9603 1601
RSR opened in late November, financed by the Hong Kong group Apples and Pears, which recently also poured money into Interlude. Speaking of Interlude, I went there in December for a very special celebratory dinner. Their 11 course degustation was AMAZING but the dim lighting meant my photos are horribly blurry, so I decided not to write it up (must get a better camera, stat!!) - anyway, Cindy from the blog Where's the Beef recently wrote a brilliant review of the vegetarian-but-still-very-similar version of the Interlude 11 Courser which I suggest you read.
BUT I DIGRESS. Red Spice Road is divided into four distinct areas, all of them very generously proportioned: the bar (top photo) with cocktail lounge ("opium bed") seating just out of shot, the "long room" (second photo - as Epicure pointed out, borrowing heavily from the Longrain school of design), the courtyard (third photo) and finally the "round room" (pictured below), which is where we elected to sit.
The round room is very impressive, with sunlight flooding in through a huge domed skylight on to a round wooden table that can seat 56 people around its inner and outer rims.
Also like Longrain, the RSR menu has a strong Thai accent, but with a few more pan-Asian dishes thrown in. I had been delighted to read about the lunch special on their website - a $40 total for two people gets you an appetiser each, plus three share dishes and a bit of rice. Sold!
Yeah, I know. MORE salmon roe for Claire! This is the appetiser, eaten leaf and all: betel leaf with spanner crab, chicken, salmon roe, shallots and peanuts. I really loved this scrumptious little morsel - it was the perfect way to start the meal.
The first of the share dishes was the shredded chicken, mint, bean noodle, lemongrass and coconut salad. This was also excellent - the dressing on the salad was quite delicate, allowing all the other flavours to balance out nicely.
The second share dish was the lamb shank Massaman curry with eggplant, potato and peanuts. It was probably my least favourite of the dishes we tried, not that there was anything wrong with it - it was a nice Massaman curry - it's probably because the hearty, heavy nature of the dish didn't suit my appetite on a stinking hot January day.
The final share dish was crispy pork belly with chilli caramel, apple salad and black vinegar. I really wish I'd taken a better photo of this one so you could see the lovely dark sticky sauce - this one was deliciously sinful, with slivers of apple providing an ideal foil to the strong flavours of the crispy meat and the sweet/sour/spicy sauce.
Definitely worth a visit. I'm hoping to head back there soon!
Cookie
First floor, 252 Swanston St, Melbourne (map)
9663 7660
That scorching Friday evening between Christmas and New Year I was meeting best friend K (K1) and K2, a uni friend of mine who has moved to Canberra and was in town to do the holiday season thing with family. As K2 had been out of Melbourne for a while and wanted to go somewhere a bit fun in the city where she'd never been before, I tried booking at Seamstress and Gingerboy (both closed) before settling on Cookie. I'd only eaten once before at Cookie and that was 18 months ago, but I remembered liking the drunken noodles and something with minced pork.
My usual hesitation at going to Cookie on a Friday night was displaced by the comforting thought that most of the suits would be down at Portsea. :)
Even given the Yuletide Melbourne exodus and the abominable 39 degree heat, the restaurant at Cookie was fully booked, so we had to sit at a table in the bar section, but as the menu is identical we didn't really mind. What we DID mind, however, was the food. If the food at Cookie were a song it would be the "One Note Samba"... and that note would be CHILLI.
Don't get me wrong - I love chilli. When I get the Chilli Oil Dumplings at Camy's, I add EXTRA chilli. But the food we tried at Cookie (with one exception) was so freaking spicy that it was really... unenjoyable. Which was a shame.
The only other time I've been actually unable to eat the food because there was too much chilli in it was at Chilli Paradise. But hey, at least there the name warned us what we were in for (even if it turned out to be more like Chilli Hell)...
The dishes we had at Cookie, in order from least spicy to most spicy, were as follows:
K1's dish was chicken and bananna (sic) blossom salad with coconut and coriander ($18.50). I tasted this one - it was really lovely and refreshing. Wish I'd chosen it.
We ordered a salad for the three of us to share - cashew, tomato, cucumber and coriander salad ($12.50). Very small for the price paid (that's a standard rice bowl), and the big chunks of raw Spanish onion weren't appreciated. Also, it may not look it but the dressing had a fair whack of chilli, so this salad was not the respite from spicy main dishes that our tastebuds were hoping for.
K2 had the stir fried pippies with chilli and basil ($16.50). Does one normally stir fry shells? In any event, to pippies I generally say "meh", so I didn't taste this dish. K2 reported back that it was extremely spicy, even when avoiding the chilli chunks and chilli seeds - but then again I'm not sure how tough her chilli tolerance levels are... :)
My dish was the duck jungle curry with eggplant and bamboo shoots ($19.50). I had a good feeling about it when I ordered - eggplant and bamboo shoots are two of my favourite curry ingredients, but I had never had them both in the same curry. Like other jungle curries, the consistency was watery rather than creamy, but the chilli... my god, the chilli. I'd always heard that you shouldn't put too much chilli in a jungle curry, as the white and green peppercorns already give it lots of peppery spice. But the Cookie kitchen clearly does not subscribe to this school of thought.
You have been warned!
Nonna certainly had been busy that morning, preparing tray after tray of the world's softest gnocchi di patate (assisted in the rolling stage by Nonno).
Nonna boiling the gnocchi in her spotless kitchen (tinted blue because the blinds were lowered to keep out the heat).
Fishing the gnocchi out of the boiling water with a slotted spoon as they rose to the surface.
Adding a little of the sugo (a ragu), also made fresh that morning. Most Thursdays, I'm lucky enough to be given a small jar of Nonna's sugo to take home... :)
Gnocchi con sugo!
My Nonna wouldn't ever DREAM of having guests over and giving them "just" a pasta course. So the secondo piatto was polpette (meatballs) in leftover sugo, plus a salad featuring radicchio bianco triestino (wonderfully bittersweet) plucked from Nonno's garden just before we'd arrived.
Next came the obligatory cheese course. Apart from the Gorgonzola, Nonna and Nonno prefer hard cheeses, so we also had Piave, Montasio and Prima Donna.
And finally, fruit - lovely seedless grapes cold from the fridge and cherries (my obsession continues!). Nonna kept apologising that the meal had been so simple... :)
I was going to type up my notes on Nonna's recipe, but as I was writing this blog entry, my Google Reader account informed me that mellie from the blog Tummy Rumbles has this very afternoon written a fantastic entry on making traditional gnocchi di patate! Nonna's recipe and preparation method is virtually identical, except for the fact that Nonna waits until the salted potato moosh is cold before mixing in the other ingredients, and uses 2 eggs to 4 potatoes.
Allow me to say Happy New Year to everybody in polenta form! The polenta message is courtesy of F, who brought it along to the NYE party we attended... :)
Sydney Fish Market
Bank St, Pyrmont (NSW) (map)
02 9004 1100
I'd never been to Sydney Fish Market before, and had not been aware of how HUGE it is! The largest in the Southern hemisphere, and the second largest worldwide (after Tokyo) in terms of the variety of seafood on offer.
If only Melbourne had a fish market like this! As well as buying fresh fish to take home, you can buy lots of stuff at the market already prepared. The tables, deli and bottle shop which also sells plastic glasses means that you can dine there in the market, if you wish. We chose to take seafood back to I and C's apartment to eat there.
A man was shucking oysters in an impressive feat of dexterity and speed.
Mmmmmmmm, so much to choose from! It ALMOST makes one want to live in Sydney... ;)
Sashimi sashimi sashimi! We went a little crazy with the sashimi ordering, but we couldn't help it, it looked so fresh and delicious. It was great to watch the sushi chef slice it before our eyes.
My mouth waters every time I look at this photo. C arranged the sashimi on a platter with seaweed salad running down the middle and served it with "proper" wasabi. I just love the way he arranged the freshly chopped ginger in a little star, and served the fish roe neatly on a slice of lemon!
As well as the sashimi platter, we had a dozen Sydney rock oysters from Port Stephens, and a dozen Pacific oysters from Coffin Bay, plus the obligatory "prawngasm" (according to family tradition, a prawngasm involves of a gigantic bowl of cooked prawns served with dipping mayonnaise and, if my sister Birdie has anything to do with it, sweet chilli sauce). For this particular prawngasm we bought king prawns and tiger prawns.
As if that wasn't enough, we had a second course of fish as well. C roasted it simply, allowing the flavour of the snapper to do the talking, with ginger, garlic, lime and spring onion on the inside and a coating of salt on the outside. C didn't use that much salt - by contrast when my relatives in Italy prepare "pesce al sale", the fish is literally buried under a mound of salt flakes. In any event, C's snapper was sublime.
And what better way to finish off an amazing meal than with amazing cherries. Every summer I become quite the cherry fiend and eat them non-stop - and purely conincidentally, I'm eating some right now as I type this! :)
