Sydney Gastronome: sensational Korean at Moon Park

Moon Park
Level 1, 34b Redfern Street (entry via Elizabeth Street), Redfern, NSW (map)
02 9690 0111
Open Lunch Fri & Sun noon-3pm, Dinner Tues-Sat 5:30-11pm
facebook, twitter


On my most recent trip to Sydney I had dinner at Moon Park, and months later I'm still thinking about that meal.

It's modern Korean, but not modern Korean as you know it. The young trio behind Moon Park have created a restaurant that feels different to every other Korean restaurant in Australia. Formerly at Melbourne's Cutler & Co before his move to Sydney, Ben Sears became head chef at Claude's in Woollahra. He met his girlfriend Eun Hee Ann while they were both working in the Claude's kitchen, and late last year they opened Moon Park as chefs and co-owners with their friend Ned Brooks (ex-MoVida and one half of wine agency Brooks & Amos), who runs front of house. The wine list is supersmart, favouring natural wines from Australia and France without going overboard. My favourite was the Patrick Sullivan 'Breakfast Wine' 2012, a naturalish skin contact Sauvignon Blanc from the Yarra Valley (not a wine I would ever have chosen off my own bat) that went brilliantly with the elegant food.


Ah, the food. While some dishes on the menu are quite traditional ("This recipe is so Korean, my partner won't let me make it - only she is allowed to make it", joked Ben to me at one point), others reinvent Korean dishes quite radically. Yeah there's fried chicken on the menu, but it's shrimp brined; yeah there's bindaedduk, but instead of being a mung bean pancake here it consists of narrow bricks of fried chickpea cake ($5, pictured above next to the cucumber kimchi). The Bibim ($20) blends includes pearl barley, asparagus, corn, crab, cured egg and nori served with gochujang (pictured below - NB in our case the crab was served separately because my dinner date was vegetarian).


In addition to tasting good, the dishes are beautifully plated. The whipped tofu is served with technicolor carrots, buckwheat and shiitake crisps ($15). Carrots also put in an appearance in the imjasutang ($17): traditionally a soup served to royalty, here a salad of delicately poached chicken, pinenut, mushroom, date puree, sesame paste and pickled rose.



Ben was Andrew McConnell's pastry chef at Cutler, so we ordered both desserts. The patbingsu ($13) consists of tiny sugared donuts served with strawberry, fig leaf shaved milk, red bean and omija (five-flavour tea). The "moon pie" ($14) is a deconstructed, utterly delicious combination of poached pear, maesil (green plum) marshmallow, ginger jelly and graham cracker crumbs.



The venue is a little tricky to find: the corner building faces Redfern Park, but entry is via Elizabeth Street and the low-key restaurant space is hidden above a decorative arts showroom. My list of places to visit on my next Sydney trip is long, but DAMN it will be hard to resist revisiting Moon Park.

The other standout meal on my last trip to Sydney? Cafe Paci. I didn't write about it, but judging from his review (which I highly recommend you read), Mr Lethlean and I had a very similar set menu. They only have a 12 month lease, so make a reservation quicksticks.

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.

Australian gin, new Melbourne restaurants and food trends for 2014

A few quick updates on what I've been up to this summer:

- I wrote an article about Australian gins and the use of native botanicals for Fairfax's Good Food/Epicure. At last I'm putting my obsession with gin, and with Australian gins in particular, to good use. Research for the article included visiting Wilma (pictured above), the beautiful CARL copper pot still used to make Four Pillars Gin in the Yarra Valley. Expect to see more gin-related content on Melbourne Gastronome soon...

- Although I haven't published any new blog posts lately, I've been continuing to update my new Melbourne venues page and my upcoming Melbourne venues page. By my count there were 11 new openings so far this month and 23 new openings in December (!!!) so check them out (and, as ever, let me know which ones I've missed).

- Three weeks ago I was interviewed on JOY 94.9FM about food trends for 2014 by the host of the food and drink radio show Cravings, the debonair Pete Dillon. Also on the panel that afternoon was Epicure's Hilary McNevin and former Gastronomy Program Manager at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, Sharlee Gibb. To find out what trends we talked about - apart from me ranting about fake alcopop "ciders" - download the podcast of the show by clicking on the link above.

The new ACCC guidelines: Australian law and online reviews

Last week the ACCC released its first guidance materials relating to online product reviews for businesses and review platforms. The arrival of the guidelines was warmly welcomed by those of us concerned with disclosures and misleading conduct online - in the absence of specific guidance in the Australian legal context, we'd had to look to equivalent guidelines in the US (see the FTC's 2009 Guidance on Endorsements and Testimonials and the updated-for-2013 Dot Com Disclosures guidance for digital advertising) and the UK (see the ASA's recent publication Blurring advertising and blogs – why it pays to know the ad rules).

In light of the confusion surrounding the ACCC guidelines from some people online ('So if I only post positive reviews of my wines on my site, is that in violation?!' one wine person tweeted to me) I thought I'd write this post setting out the guidelines, as they intersect nicely between my blogging and my professional expertise relating to consumer law.

A couple of initial points:

- Contrary to what you may have heard, these are not 'new laws' that the ACCC is introducing. Misleading or deceptive conduct continues to be prohibited under the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA) incorporating the Australian Consumer Law (ACL), punishable by penalties of up to $1.1 million. What the guidelines do is help to identify misleading conduct in the specific context of online reviews.

- The ACCC guidelines relate to 'review platforms', which are defined as 'sites, sections of sites or software tools (eg apps) which publish reviews about a range of goods, services or businesses and whose predominant audience are consumers seeking product or business information to inform a prospective purchase. Review platforms generally publish reviews on their own site. Sometimes review platforms are engaged to collect and publish reviews on another’s site.' The guidelines confirm that the principles equally apply to blogs and discussion threads. It also makes no difference whether the reviews are by experts or 'everyday' consumers (eg Urbanspoon, Yelp, TripAdvisor).

The quotes below come from the ACCC guidance and the summary for businesses on the ACCC website.

Disclosing commercial arrangements with reviewed businesses

Commercial relationships between review platforms and businesses may influence the overall rating of a business on the site. For example, a review platform may allow businesses that advertise on the site to select a review to appear at the top of the page or prevent negative reviews from being automatically uploaded. This may mislead consumers by creating an impression that the business received more favourable reviews than it actually has. Disclosing commercial relationships between review platforms and businesses helps consumers make better informed decisions about the business and its products or services.

Platforms which allow commercial relationships with reviewed businesses to impact upon the content or presentation of reviews, in particular the inflation of review results, risk breaching the CCA. In circumstances where a commercial relationship does not affect the review results, it is recommended that there is disclosure of this relationship to consumers using the review platform.

For platforms opting to rely on disclosure, suggestions as to how this disclosure may be made include:
- a prominent explanation of the nature and extent of the commercial relationship and its impact, if any, on the review page of the affected business
- distinguishing review results which are in any way promoted or improved because of a commercial relationship with the platform through shading or other means so that their content is not confused with ‘organic’ review results.

If you have a commercial relationship: disclose it.

The guidance goes beyond the obvious point of disclosing advertorials to include the ways in which commercial relationships between the business and the reviewer or review platform may influence in subtler ways, such as the business being able to manipulate review results.

This excellent article on the guidelines in the Fin Review by Cha's Kitchen points to @stickifingers' commendable use of the #myclient hashtag when tweeting about her clients.

‘Consumer reviews’ written by businesses or on behalf of businesses

The writing of reviews by a business about itself as though it were a consumer is misleading; as is writing negative reviews about a competitor when the author has not experienced the product or service. Engaging an individual, a search engine optimisation firm or other public relations firm to deliver reviews by persons who are purporting to be, but who are not in fact, genuine consumers is misleading.

You should not write reviews when you have not experienced the good or service reviewed or reviews which do not reflect a genuinely held opinion. You should not solicit others to write reviews about your business or a competitor’s business if they have not experienced the good or service. The ACCC considers such conduct to be misleading.

You should not encourage family and friends to write reviews about your business without disclosing their personal connection with your business in that review.

Re that last point: undisclosed personal connections can also mislead, even if there's no commercial relationship. When I write about places that are run by mates of mine I always err on the side of disclosing our connection (even if it risks making me sound like a pretentious name-dropper).

Detecting and removing fake consumer reviews

Businesses and review platforms that do not remove reviews that they know to be fake risk breaching the CCA.

Whilst it is not always possible to detect every fake review, review platforms should have appropriate processes and procedures in place to detect and remove fake reviews. A best practice approach is to reactively (relying on complaints information) and proactively (using automated or manual internal systems) seek out fake reviews, including after they have been posted.

There is no precise formula for identifying fake reviews. In relation to the detection of suspected fake material, reviews which may warrant attention include those:
- which are part of a significant ‘spike’ in reviews about a particular business over a limited period of time
- written from the same email or IP address as each other or as the business reviewed
- written about the same business, good or service where the accounts of those who wrote reviews demonstrate abnormal similarities, e.g. similar email addresses, user names, passwords or IP addresses
- which use overly positive or ‘marketing-speak’ writing styles
- which do not make sense
- which use the same exact language as other reviews of the same business or product.

Reviews may mislead consumers if they are presented as impartial, but were written by:
- the reviewed business
- a competitor
- someone paid to write the review who has not used the product
- someone who has used the product but written an inflated review to receive a financial or non-financial benefit.

Tips for businesses:
The ACCC considers conduct such as the following to be misleading. You should not:
- encourage family and friends to write reviews about your business without disclosing their personal connection with your business in that review
- write reviews when you have not experienced the good or service reviewed or which do not reflect a genuinely held opinion
- solicit others to write reviews about your business or a competitor’s business if they have not experienced the good or service.

In their online advice for consumers, the ACCC also warns consumers to 'be wary of reviewers or online contributors whose profile indicates that they have only ever written one review. The profile may have been created to write a fake review.' To their credit, websites like Yelp are going to considerable lengths to try to weed out fake reviews.

Incentivised consumer reviews

Incentives should only be offered in exchange for reviews of your business (its products or services) if:
1) incentives are offered equally to consumers likely to be complimentary and consumers likely to be critical, and positive and negative reviews are treated the same
2) the reviewer is expressly told that the incentive is available whether the review is positive or negative
3) the incentive is prominently disclosed to users who rely on affected reviews.

When an online review platform offers an incentive, it should do so in accordance with the three recommendations set out under the guidance for reviewed businesses relating to incentivised reviews. It is recommended that disclosure of any incentive which the platform offers in exchange for a review be placed by the platform prominently on the review page of the business whose reviews are affected by the incentive.

When provided with an incentive, many people tend to write a positive review: as Phil Lees notes, the Norm of Reciprocity is strong.

The ACCC's use of the term 'incentives' is sufficiently broad to cover perks like free meals, samples for giveaways and other non-financial benefits.

An incentive disclosure case study: when Third Wave Cafe in Prahran opened in October, the owner wrote to just about every food blogger in Melbourne, inviting them to come in and have a free meal. Of the 32 blog posts listed on Urbanspoon reviewing Third Wave Cafe over the last two months, 27 make some form of disclosure about the incentive they received (ranging from the specific - 'sponsored post: our meal was paid for by TWC' - to the vague - 'we were invited to visit TWC'). Five of the blog posts are silent as to whether they received incentives (it is unclear whether or not they received the incentive). Of the 27 that did disclose, a handful did not do so until the end of the post (often in the form of an italicised disclaimer). The US FTC has suggested that disclosures of this nature may not be sufficiently clear and conspicuous.

In its media release announcing the guidelines, the ACCC said it was also concerned about businesses artificially inflating their review results by offering consumers generous incentives in exchange for reviews of their products or services. Promotions of this nature may need to be reviewed in the future to ensure they meet the three recommendations set out above.

The omission of credible consumer reviews, inflated (average) reviews and the ‘big picture’

The removal of review content is a regular feature of consumer review platforms and is warranted where it prevents fake, offensive, defamatory or irrelevant reviews from being published. Deleting or hiding reviews suspected of being fake or reviews which are offensive, defamatory or irrelevant is not misleading as consumer review platform users anticipate limited removals to improve the quality of reviews.

Online review platforms should ensure that the overall impression created by a body of reviews on a review platform is not misleading. Platforms which selectively remove or edit negative reviews because of a commercial relationship with a reviewed business risk creating an overall picture of consumer opinion which is misleading.

If the total body of reviews doesn’t reflect the opinions of consumers who have submitted the reviews consumers may be misled.

Content moderation policies of review platforms ensure users and businesses have a clear understanding of when and why online consumer reviews will be removed. It is recommended that consumer review platforms make their policy for publishing and removing consumer content accessible to platform users.

Note here that the guidelines are referring to reviews on review platforms, rather than reviews of a product on the product's own website.

The guideance confirms that if you're a blogger who only writes positive reviews then that's your prerogative; if however you went back to edit/remove your old blog posts that were critical of a business because you now have a commercial relationship with that business, that's a problem which may be misleading.

*****
One issue that is indirectly touched upon in the guidelines is the question of bloggers who solicit freebies. Provided that disclosure is made, solicitation probably isn't misleading (just tacky as hell, in the eyes of several who think such behaviour gives bloggers a bad name).

RELATED: I'm going to be speaking on a panel at next year's Chef Jam at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. I'll be on a panel with Lucky Peach editor-in-chief Chris Ying and Fool magazine's Per-Anders Jörgensen, debating 'the rise, and rise, of the food blogger'. Wish me luck!

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.

New openings this week, some special events and an article I wrote for The Guardian

Just because I haven't published a blog post for a while doesn't mean I haven't been beavering away behind the scenes here at Melbourne Gastronome. I've finally brought my New Melbourne Venues and Melbourne Venues Opening Soon pages up to date, after the distractions of a five week trip to the US and moving house and being without home internet (HURRY UP, iiNet/Telstra). I've written little snippets about all the places I know of that have opened in Melbourne since 1 July 2013, or are going to open soon. Which ones have I missed?

This week alone the newbies include Andy Bedford's Charlie's Restaurant that opened yesterday in the site that was Marmalade and Soul, and the Van Haandel's Trocadero reborn as Fatto Bar & Cantina, opening tonight. Next week it's South Side Huxtaburger and Gelato Messina - expect huge crowds at both. And I was interested to learn that Dylan Roberts (former sous at Cutler, last seen running the Claremont Tonic kitchen) is consulting on a restaurant soon to open a few doors down from Hanoi Hannah. For more details see here and here, and keep checking back for updates.


Marina at Pelmeni Kitchen

Grilled snapper at Uncle

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU, HAROLD?! at State of Grace

René Redzepi talking 'bout brains at The Wheeler Centre
One page that I haven't got around to updating yet is the Melbourne pop-ups page, but I'll hopefully do so soon. In the meantime, here are some events worth noting:

- Good Food Month has kicked off - I attended the launch party last week and was impressed with Special Guest Star René Redzepi's candour in his speech about the meltdown he experienced over the pressures of going "from zero to hero" with Noma. He gave a great presentation the following night at The Wheeler Centre too. Browse the Good Food Month website for details of particular events: it runs until the end of November and there are over 300 events to choose from.

- As a fervent fan of the film CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (starring Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman at their most smoking), I'm really looking forward to the Culinary Cinema movie matched dinner my gal BurgerMary is organising next week on the 14th with The Baron Said. If you're more of a Tarantino fan, they're doing a DEATH PROOF matched dinner on the 30th of November. Click for details.

- StreetSmart's DineSmart event runs from 11 November to 31 December 2013. I've been a fan of this initiative for years. Diners at participating restaurants are asked to make a small donation to StreetSmart on their bill ($2 or more), 100% of which goes to local grassroots charities supporting homelessness.


And for those of you who didn't already see me spruik it via social media, I wrote an article a few weeks ago for The Guardian on the Top 10 budget restaurants and cafes in Melbourne. What do you think of my list? I steered away from the obvious usual favourites like A1 Bakery, but the brief was to write about budget places in areas that are easily accessible by tourists. I decided budget meant all menu items are roughly <$20, and I tried to ensure the list had a mix of cuisines and old and new (though looking back on it now I wish the south side was better represented). Oh and to the guy who left a sarcastic comment about Thai slaw - it WAS som tam, you twonk.