Fortnightly round-up (25 April)

Good news: the famous Borek shop in the Deli Hall at Queen Victoria Market (where a mere $2.50 will still buy you one of the best quick lunches in town) is about to open an additional outlet in the city, at 481 Elizabeth Street. I chatted to the formidably efficient Borek Lady and she confirmed that it should open in about four weeks - and that due to the increased kitchen space they'll be offering a wider range of delicious and cheap Turkish snacks in the new outlet, including gözleme. Yesssss.


Another month, ANOTHER two new Mexican restaurants opening in Melbourne. As one chef joked on Twitter, he's thinking of opening a Mexican restaurant called Bandwagon. I haven't been to either yet, but you'll find Radio Mexico Taquería & Bar at 11 Carlisle Street, St Kilda, and Chingón Cantina y Taquería at 413 Swan Street, Richmond (a few minutes down the road from Fonda).

Last week I was invited along to a blogger dinner at Touché Hombre (one of the two Mexican restaurants that opened last month, as mentioned in one of my previous round-ups). While being treated to samples from their menu - the morcilla and breakfast tacos are their best in my opinion, and the ice cream sandwiches pictured below are a highlight - I took the opportunity to grill owner Davis Yu (who at the age of 21 re-opened the restaurant formerly known as Lynch's as the Millswyn in 2010) about the next restaurant he has in the pipeline.

Provisionally named Claremont Tonic, Yu's third restaurant will be dishing up Thai and Japanese flavours on a menu focussed on share plates. It's scheduled to open in June around the corner from MamaBaba in South Yarra, and Yu intends for it to be the "less grungy sister of Touché Hombre".


May 12 to May 19 is Good Beer Week! The festival celebrating good beer has 100 events scheduled at venues across Melbourne and Victoria, including breweries, bars, pubs, restaurants, cocktail bars and chocolatiers. A highlight will be the Masterclass of Champions which sees the brewers from Nøgne Ø (Norway) and Moylan's (US) come together at Hargreaves Hill's brewery in the Yarra Valley to create a one-off brew, hold an intimate beer masterclass then join guests for a three-course degustation prepared by a team drawn from the Stokehouse and Auction Rooms by The 36 Collective. The whole program for Good Beer Week can be browsed day-by-day here.


In addition to hosting several events for Good Beer Week, the Local Taphouse serves a damn fine Southern fried chicken in a bucket, with coleslaw, mash and gravy. I just thought you should know.


And speaking of Southern food, my friend Ev and I booked tickets and went along to the final You don't mess with Texas dinner held last week at St Ali by our friend Jess Pryles (aka Burger Mary) and the boys from Red River BBQ. We loved the pickle chips, the jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, the amaaaazing mac 'n cheese, and the peach cobbler for dessert. Ditto the excellent pulled pork and the Texas cut brisket that had been smoked for 16 hours. Jess even coaxed several dinner guests (yours truly included) to join her in the street outside to learn how to line-dance. Thank y'all for a fun night out.


On Fridays, both the Prahran Market and Queen Victoria Market branches of Market Lane Coffee sell $4 Portuguese custard tarts made by Angie Locharden. They are the BEST Portuguese custard tarts I've tasted in Melbourne.


Finally, I loved my initial visit last week to Casa Ciuccio, the new Gertrude Street restaurant from Matt McConnell, Jo Gamvros and the rest of the Bar Lourinhã team. Highlights included veal rib (a coal pit daily special, at market price) and the green tomatoes served with wonderful buffalo milk queso fresco ($16). When you visit be sure to order the chargrilled octopus tentacle (sold by weight), as well as at least one item slow cooked for a minimum of three hours over the coals.


Links of Note:

- A great interview on The Design Files (by Lee Tran Lam, one of Sydney's best food bloggers) with Rachel Luchetti and Stuart Krelle of Luchetti Krelle, the design studio behind some of Sydney's hot new restaurants.

- David Chang shared his five favourite Sydney restaurants with the Wall Street Journal.

- Chef Sandwich blogger rants: why is there so much lazy, self-indulgent, pompous drivel in food writing?

- Words of wisdom from former New York Times food writer and editor Amanda Hesser: it’s nearly impossible to make a living as a food writer, and it’s only going to get worse.

- Fresh back from their Argentinean adventure (more about which you'll hear soon), Ben Edwards and Dan Sims from The Wine Guide have posted a new entry in The Sommelier Diaries, their excellent series of in-depth interviews with the best sommeliers in Australia and beyond. The latest interview is with Kim Bickley, from Luke Mangan's Glass Brasserie, and I recommend reading the previous 13 interviews too.

- Saveur announces its Best Food Blog Awards finalists in the Best Food Humor Blog, Best Food Photography and Best Celebrity Food Blog categories.

- A gorgeous post on Cook Republic showing how to make hung yogurt.

- At first I thought folks on Twitter were taking the piss, but it turns out that René Redzepi really will run a Noma pop-up at Claridge's during the London Olympics, for £195 per head.

- The Atlantic presents six rules for dining out, from a frugal economist.

- Fascinating article on food wastage by Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella, looking behind the scenes at Food Bank.

Fortnightly round-up (11 April)

There has been a spate of food stores adjoining cafes/restaurants opening in the last few months: think Albert Street Food & Wine, and the Mini Marche at Hardware Societe. Now Southern Thai cafe Middle Fish has also started stocking Thai ingredients that they use in their dishes for you to take home (I was particularly taken with the Police Dog Brand tins). Bubbly proprietor Pla is only too happy to explain to you how the products are best used.


Speaking of Middle Fish, their kang tai pla (Southern style anchovy curry, $15.50) is the breakfast of champions.


Coming soon to a blog near you: an article about lots and lots of different small batch gins and tonics (here's a sneak preview). It's taken a long while, but I've nearly finished it. I've been reading some gin literature as part of my research, and have particularly enjoyed The Bartender's Gin Compendium by Gaz Regan, and Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason by Jessica Warner.


The organic bento at Kappaya Japanese Soul Food Cafe at Abbotsford Convent. Strongly recommended.


Some happy snaps of Easter culinary highlights: Mum's hot cross buns, served at our traditional Good Friday Champagne Breakfast;


Paola's chicken brodo with handmade agnolotti (stuffed with crispy pancetta and roasted peas), served at Sunday lunch;


céleri rémoulade (quite possibly my favourite salad of all time. OF ALL TIME!);


and a rather scary looking flourless chocolate cake. Who needs Easter eggs?



Links of Note:

- Mel wrote a great post about the ethics of restaurant food blogging on Fooderati. I really wish all bloggers would abide by these principles - the bad apples that don't give the rest of us a bad name. I like too that Mel included some advice for restaurants as well: don't encourage bad behaviour by courting it!

- Food blog ethics aren't just confined to the "dining out" blogs: the vexed issue of recipe copyright keeps cropping up on "dining in" blogs. Local bloggers Green Gourmet Giraffe and Confessions of a Food Nazi have written about it, noting that the author of Lambs' Ears and Honey has posted a follow up post to the original one that sparked the controversy.

- Squid Ink, L.A. Weekly's food blog, posted a neat Venn diagram showing L.A.'s idea of Mexican food vs what Mexicans really eat.

- To score [wine] or not to score: that is the question, writes Tom Hogan on I Love Riesling.

- Keen to relive the MFWF? Dining Nirvana wrote a wrap-up of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, including a handy list of blog posts by other bloggers reviewing MFWF events: part one, part two.

- Gorgeous post on Fox's Lane about a community cider pressing day.

- DineSmart 2011 raises $352,328 to fund 91 Community Projects. Bravo to all who donated/fundraised, especially to Chin Chin for their Victorian champion fundraising effort!

- BOOKMARK: Eater's The 38 Essential New York Restaurants, April '12.

- Peruvian food in Surry Hills? Yes please. From A Table for Two.

- Also drooling over photos of new Sydney restaurant Sixpenny on The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry. I'm heading up to Sydney next month: now taking suggestions on where I should eat and drink...

Dinner for three at Cutler & Co

Cutler & Co
55-57 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy (map)
9419 4888
Open for dinner Tuesday-Sunday, plus lunch on Friday and Sunday
website


Carla (author of the excellent blog Easy As Vegan Pie) and I had been talking for a while about going out for a nice lavish dinner together and each writing about it afterwards. Hopefully it'll turn into a semi-regular collaborative blog series. We decided on Cutler as our first destination and booked a table, advising them of our dietary requirements well in advance (me: omnivore but for mussels, her: wheat-free vegan). I was confident that they'd cater for an omni just fine, but was looking forward to seeing what they'd serve Carla.

We brought along Dan, editor of Milk Bar Mag, as our innocent bystander. Apart from the omnivore entrees and mains that Dan and I ordered, everything else that was brought to the table was both vegan and wheat-free.


In the interests of transparency I'll point out too at the outset that we were treated very very well that night. While none of us sought special treatment (ugh, the tackiness of those who actually call up restaurants saying that they're food bloggers makes my skin crawl) a number of dishes arrived at our table compliments of the house. Upon review of the receipt some days later we noticed that there was an apparent mix up with one of the bottles of wine we'd ordered, but given all the little extras that came our way we still easily came out on top.


As we downed the Junipero gin and tonics we'd ordered from the charming Lachie, we were brought a trio of complimentary appetisers: seaweed crackers with smoky eggplant mousse and sesame, juicy Manzanilla olives and fried pimientos de Padrón with sea salt. Loved the smoky fluffy eggplant with the crisp crackers in particular.


I'd been sorely tempted to choose the pretty entree Dan decided to order, the smoked and fried duck with morcilla, golden raisin and beetroot ($27)...


...but I loved loved loved the entree I ended up ordering, a delicate arrangement of hand picked spanner crab, corn custard, mushrooms, sweet radish, pickled ginger and nasturtiums ($29), served cold. My new favourite dish at Cutler.


Two small salads arrived unbidden with our mains, one crunchy with shaved cabbage and fennel, and the other with rather meaty heirloom tomatoes, muscatel vinegar, purslane and different kinds of basil.


For main course Dan ordered the pan roasted snapper ($44). It was served with mussels, slivers of cuttlefish, green tomatoes, pickled onions and parsley sauce. And foam (afraid I can't recall what the foam was). Dan confessed to being a little underwhelmed by this one.


I really enjoyed my main though. It consisted of two variations of beef: grain fed strip loin ever so lightly seared then sliced down the middle, and a wonderfully unctuous and rich braised short rib with onion and pureed cauliflower ($46).


I asked our highly professional waitress to bring a vegan dessert for the three of us to share. It was composed of white nectarine, white peach, blackberries, frozen dehydrated raspberries and verjuice granita ($18). Delicious, but I confess to wishing I'd ordered whichever dessert includes the Cutler & Co violet ice cream, cos it is goddamned glorious.


Oh and some complimentary fig drizzled with thyme caramel (pictured here half devoured by Carla) and fudge arrived with our coffees.


Now click to read Carla's far more entertaining version of events and see what she was served for entree and main (I think the entree she had is usually served with raw Hervey Bay scallops). Carla is also running one of her vegan cooking classes in a few weeks, so make a booking if you know what's good for you...

And get yourselves down to Cutler! Head chef Jean-Paul Twomey and his kitchen are at the top of their game.

Fortnightly round-up (28 March)

So did you hear that St Ali will soon be opening on the northside? While the original St Ali continues to power on in South Melbourne, the site for St Ali North has been chosen in Carlton North: a long, skinny lot that runs alongside the bike path, behind Velo Cycles on Nicholson Street. To tap even further into the synergy that seems to exist in Melbourne between specialty coffee and cycling, blueprints of the new cafe tweeted by Sal Malatesta indicate a coffee "ride thru" for cyclists on the bike path wanting their caffeine to go.


On Saturday I went with Hannah to The Richmond Weekender in the old Channel 9 TV studios (for more info about the concept behind the month-long pop-up, see The Design Files). The Homemakers Market wasn't running while Hannah and I were there, but we stickybeaked inside the Speakeasy Cinema and shared a serve of Fancy Hank's Bar-B-Que at the Graham Canteen: pulled Otway pork, North Carolina ribs and Parwin Angus beef brisket (all sold by weight) with condiments and salads. Not bad by Melbourne standards, and for those who miss out at the Graham Canteen there's talk of Fancy Hank's putting in future appearances at Abbotsford Convent.

For those still keen to check out The Richmond Weekender, its last days of operation are this Saturday and Sunday - and on the Sunday they're running The Homemakers Market again, from 10am-3pm.



Anyone else noticed that Brunswick Bitter on tap is popping up at almost every new restaurant? Someone's brand ambassadors sure have been hard at work getting tap visibility. In the past fortnight alone I've spotted it at Pei Modern, Touche Hombre, Choo Choo's and Albert St Food and Wine. It's brewed by shiny newcomers Thunder Road Brewing Company and made from all-Victorian ingredients.


I put it to you that buying a haloumi pie from Al-Alamy in Coburg for the princely sum of $2.50 will be the best $2.50 you'll spend this week.


On Sunday my mother made Poulet aux Quarante Gousses d'Ail (roast chicken with forty cloves of garlic), with predictably delicious results. Technically this batch had 46 gousses.


Oh, and apologies for the delay of this Fortnightly Round-up. I blame Mad Men.

Links of Note:

- Beautiful Pantone tarts by French food designer Emilie De Griottes.

- Allan Campion wrote a handy little list of Melbourne CBD Highlights on The Melbourne Foodie that you can recommend to your visitors from out of town. Reminds me that my own Visitors Guide is in dire need of an update!

- Cook Republic has a recipe for quinoa and m&m cookies. Gulp.

- Eileen from Melbourne coffee blog Birds of Unusual Vitality was part of the Coffee Common team at TED 2012 in Longbeach, California.

- TIME magazine says chefs are taking nature worship too far.

- Milk Bar Mag has revamped their website, and started producing a great series of short videos about Melbourne locals and businesses. The first one is about Burch & Purchese, the second one is about Der Raum.

- The blog Inside Cuisine posted a nice piece about the making of Pepe Saya cultured butter (a product I fell in love with last year).

- LOVE Dave Robert Clark's flowchart illustrating The Melbourne 3rd Wave Coffee Cartel, but think it needs to be updated...

- Lessons learned from lunch: the onion, the pear, and the emperor's new robes.

- Two Munch reviewed the Fringe Food Festival's Don't Mess With Texas dinner. I'm going along to the third of these dinners - looking forward to it!

Thai in Hawthorn at Bangkok Terrace

Bangkok Terrace
415 Riversdale Road, Hawthorn (map)
9882 5995
Open 7 nights


The open kitchen, sharp fitout and zippy black-clad staff calling out in Thai makes Bangkok Terrace feel more Haymarket than Hawthorn. I went there with my family the other week, my expectations raised because I'd heard that that one of the owners cheffed at Sailors Thai in Sydney for several years. Maybe Melbourne now had a Sydney Thai restaurant to call its own?


The highlight of the meal was the mouth-watering steak Laos ($18.90): Wagyu rump cap marinated, grilled rare, sliced and served with salad and nam jim jaew (a dipping sauce made from ground rice, roasted chillies, palm sugar, tamarind essence and tomatoes).


Also excellent was the roasted duck salad ($18.90) with coriander, mint and eschallots. Beautifully crisp lacquered skin.


My take on the other dishes was less enthusiastic: the salt and pepper calamari ($10.90) was pretty good, but the betel leaves with prawns and roe ($3 each) lacked the chilli kick I was hoping for. Both the Panang curry ($17.90) and Pad See Ewe ($18.90), in sorry Melbourne Thai restaurant tradition, were too sweet. I wish they wouldn't play it so safe, but instead dial up the sour and the chilli on some of the dishes, à la Chin Chin or Middle Fish.



There's the usual bitching about poor service on Bangkok Terrace's Urbanspoon entry, but we found the staff to be friendly and efficient despite the clamour of the full restaurant. I'd happily go back to Bangkok Terrace (the siren song of the steak Laos is calling), but I'd steer clear of the mild and sweet dishes. Reader recommendations for best Thai in Melbourne warmly received...


I haven't been to either yet, but if you're in the neighbourhood you might also like to check out Firechief pizzeria and adjoining cafe Goldilocks, two of the six businesses Melbourne chef Paul Mathis is opening this year.